Basil Rozanov

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Rozanov, a priest, by his full name Basil Georgievich Rozanov, was born on 22 June 1872 in the churchyard-⁠village of Chernitskoe, Opochka district, Pskov province, in the family of the priest, rector of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God there. In 1896 he finished the Pskov seminary and was appointed teacher of singing and religion at the parish school (for Russians and Estonians) in his native village. On 11 April 1902 he was ordained deacon, and on 13 April priest, by Bishop Sergius (Lanin) of Pskov and Porkhov, for the church of the Protection at Chernitskoe, becoming his father's successor and the pastor of his fellow villagers. Besides parish service he taught religion at the school in Konoshino and was a member of the deanery council. He had a family, five children. In 1905 he was moved to the Dormition church in the churchyard of Kopylko, then, after three years, appointed rector of the Kazan church in Glubokoe, where he served until it was closed by the fighters against God.

With the coming of Soviet power, he and his family were deprived of civil rights. When the church in Glubokoe was closed, he tried to move to another open church left without a priest, but the authorities would not allow it. He was forced to return with his family to Chernitskoe, where the church had also been closed. He began to gather the church "twenty" in order to obtain its reopening. In the persecution he tried to continue parish work: he celebrated services in secret, organized processions with the local wonderworking icon of the Mother of God, carrying it into homes and sustaining faith in Christ among the people. He refused to serve prayer services in homes where a portrait of Lenin hung.

He was arrested by the NKVD, accused of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and shot on 27 November 1937, at the age of sixty-⁠five. He had served thirty-⁠five years in holy orders and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 27 November, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Pskov, all in the new style.