Daria Zaitseva

Saint Daria Zaitseva, venerable martyr, was a nun of Russia, born in 1870 into a peasant family of the Ryazan governorate, a novice at the Anosin monastery. She was shot at the Butovo firing range on 14 March 1938. She is commemorated on 1 March by the old calendar, which is 14 March by the new, the day of her death.

She was born in the village of Bogoslovo and at nineteen entered the Anosin monastery of Saints Boris and Gleb as a novice, where she stayed until its closure in 1928. After that she lived and worked at the church of the Sign of the Mother of God in the village of Kholmy, Istra district, Moscow region. In 1934 she was elected churchwarden of the church.

In the years of persecution of the Church a denunciation was made against her: that she sold lamp oil and holy water. In 1938 witnesses were questioned, angry that the novice held divine conversations and did not love the Soviet power. On 3 March Daria was arrested, and on 8 March the troika attached to the NKVD Directorate for the Moscow region sentenced her to death under article 58 paragraph 10, on the charge of "active counter-⁠revolutionary agitation and expressing defeatist views about the fall of the Soviet power". She was soon transferred to Taganka prison. On 14 March 1938 she was shot at the Butovo firing range. She was rehabilitated on 21 July 1989 by the Moscow regional prosecutor's office.

She was canonized as a venerable martyr, according to one source in 2003, according to another by a decision of the Holy Synod of 12 March 2002, taken on the basis of the Council of Bishops of 2000. The Church has set as the day of commemoration the day of her martyric death.