Cosmas Petrichenko

Holy Hieromartyr Cosmas Petrichenko, a priest, was born in 1869 in the sloboda of Rybushka, Saratov province (now a village in the Saratov district), in a peasant family. His full name was Cosmas Nikiforovich Petrichenko. Until the revolution he worked the land and received no spiritual schooling. Being a deeply believing man, he served in the local Nativity church and learned the order of the services thoroughly. After the revolution, despite the violent breaking of the foundations of Russian life, he went on tilling the land, keeping his farm and, in his free time, serving in church.

In the time when a new, despotic and atheist power was establishing itself, defending the principles of religious life was in itself an ascetic feat, and Cosmas Nikiforovich resolved to take this sacrificial step. He handed his farm to his daughter Anastasia and asked to receive holy orders. He was ordained priest in 1928 by the newly appointed metropolitan of Saratov, Seraphim (Alexandrov), for the Nativity church of Rybushka. In 1935 the church in the sloboda was closed. In these conditions of intensified persecution of Orthodoxy, Father Cosmas did not cease his pastoral work: he gathered parishioners in his home, celebrated services, read spiritual books to the villagers, baptized infants, doing all he could to keep alight the flame of faith in Christ.

His work could not remain unnoticed by the authorities. On 31 October 1937 an officer of the district NKVD department received a warrant to search and arrest Citizen Petrichenko Kuzma Nikiforovich, and on the same day Father Cosmas was taken to the Saratov prison. On 2 November the first and only interrogation took place, in which the rector of Rybushka categorically rejected all the charges of anti-⁠Soviet activity. The next day five witnesses were questioned, who gave the "investigation" the statements it needed. The whole investigative procedure was openly falsified. On 14 November the indictment was drawn up against "the kulak priest Petrichenko Kuzma Nikiforovich", who "under the guise of religious prayer services in the homes of collective farmers carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation". On the same day the troika of the UNKVD of the Saratov region decided: shooting. The sentence, which crowned Father Cosmas, the good shepherd, with the incorruptible crown of a martyr for the Name of Christ, was carried out in Saratov in the evening of 16 November 1937, at 22:00. The place of burial remained unknown.

Saint Cosmas is commemorated on 16 November, the day of his death, on 12 September, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Saratov (the date moves), and on 7 February, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, in the new style.