Eugene Popov

Holy Hieromartyr Eugene Popov, a priest, was born on 10 January 1879 in the village of Khlevnoe in the Voronezh province, today the Zadonsk district of the Lipetsk region, in the family of a psalm-⁠reader, and received martyrdom by shooting in 1937, in the Yaroslavl region. The Russian Church glorified him in the year 2000.

His father was a psalm-⁠reader, and after the revolution a priest, and reposed in 1920; his mother was a housewife, and Eugene's brothers Leonid and John became priests in the years of the revolution. After the parish school he entered the Zadonsk church school, which he completed successfully in 1899. For a time he was a reader at one of the churches of the diocese.

Then he married Evdokia, and soon their son Michael was born. In the troubled years of the revolution, the leadership of the Voronezh diocese, like the whole Russian Church, greatly needed sincere and hard-⁠working clergy ready to witness to the last breath to the truths of the Gospel. In just that hard time for the fatherland, and especially for the clergy, Eugene Alexeevich Popov consciously entered the priesthood. The main place of his pastoral labours was the parish of the Transfiguration church in the small settlement of Olkhovatka, in the south of the Voronezh province.

The priest Eugene Popov almost immediately met the hostile attitude of Soviet power toward the Church. At that time the campaign of confiscating church valuables was under way, which did not bypass the church in Olkhovatka. He actively opposed the Renovationist movement, for which he was persecuted several times. In 1930 he was exiled for three years, for anti-⁠Soviet agitation. After returning he continued his pastoral service. In 1935 he was arrested again and sentenced to five years in a camp. In 1937, on the basis of a new false accusation, he was shot in the Yaroslavl region.

He is commemorated on 23 September, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, on 17 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Voronezh Metropolis, and on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style).