Catherine of Simbirsk

Holy Venerable Martyr Catherine (Ekaterina Dimitrievna Dekalina) was a nun of the Saviour convent in Simbirsk from 1890 to 1918. She was born in November 1875 in the village of Panskaya Sloboda, Simbirsk district, and was shot on the night of 17 to 18 February 1938 at Ulyanovsk. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church numbered her in 2004 among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, as a venerable martyr, and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Simbirsk. She is commemorated on 17 February, that is 4 February by the old calendar.

She was the daughter of a peasant of Simbirsk province. At baptism she was given the name of the Great Martyr Catherine of Alexandria, commemorated on 24 November. Her parents, Dimitry Paramonovich and Evdokia Ivanovna, lived modestly, and there were eight children in the family: Alexei, Anna, Ivan, Elizabeth, Vasily, Ekaterina, Nikolai and Evdokia. The family was devout, and already in childhood the girl resolved to give her virginity to Christ. In November 1890 her father took her to the Saviour convent in Simbirsk. In the convent the young woman was spoken of as diligent, quiet and hard-⁠working.

After the overthrow of 1917 persecutions began against believers. The convent was closed in April 1920. Catherine, with another ascetic, Anastasia (Fokina), worked for a time at a state enterprise, but as soon as their church activity became known, they were dismissed. They lived poorly, but did not forget to help the neighbours' children.

In 1937 an investigation was begun in a case of a "counter-⁠revolutionary church monarchist fascist insurgent organization". In the view of the NKVD, the organization included both simple people and clergy. On the basis of this fabricated case dozens of arrests were made. On 18 December 1937 Catherine's little house was searched, and although nothing was found, the woman was arrested and summoned for interrogation. Catherine and other believers were sentenced to death, which was carried out on the night of 17 to 18 February 1938, in the basement of the Ulyanovsk NKVD building. That night seventy-⁠eight people were shot. The burial place had been prepared beforehand near the city dump, where later, in the 1960s, a district of the motor factory was built.

The decision of the "troika" was annulled in 1940, and in 1956 she was rehabilitated "for lack of a crime". In 2004 she was numbered among the saints. On 12 September 2016 a veneration cross and a stone were set at the entrance of the village of Panskaya Sloboda in memory of Venerable Catherine Dekalina. On the gates of the church in honour of all the new martyrs and confessors of the Simbirsk land at the Saviour convent there is an image of Saint Catherine.