Innocent Mazurin

Venerable Martyr Innocent Mazurin was a hierodeacon of the Russian Church and was shot on 13 November 1937 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He was numbered among the new martyrs of Russia by decision of the Holy Synod of 20 April 2005, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 31 October, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo.

He was born in 1874 in the village of Berezki-⁠Chechelnitskie, Demidovka volost, Olgopol district, Podolia governorate, of a peasant family. He finished three classes at the village school. From 1896 he struggled at the Joseph monastery of Volokolamsk. From 1920 he served as psalm-⁠reader at the church in the village of Zvanovo, Lotoshino district, Moscow region. From 1924 he served as psalm-⁠reader at the church in the village of Turginovo, Tver region. From 1928, as hierodeacon, he served at the church in the village of Teryaeva Sloboda.

On 22 February 1931 he was arrested. On 28 June 1931 he was sentenced under articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the criminal code of the RSFSR, for counter-⁠revolutionary and anti-⁠Soviet agitation and setting fire to the collective farm office, to three years of imprisonment. At the interrogation he spoke very boldly: “Everyone who goes against Christ and the faith is an antichrist. And now the communists are antichrists, and Soviet power is the persecutor and enemy of the priesthood.” After the end of his sentence, in 1934, he served at the church in the village of Buigorod, Volokolamsk district, Moscow region.

On 8 October 1937 he was arrested. On 11 November the NKVD troika for the Moscow region sentenced him to death for anti-⁠Soviet agitation. On 13 November 1937 he was shot at the Butovo range near Moscow and buried in an unknown common grave.