John Pettay

Holy Hieromartyr John Pettay, a priest, was born on 1 January 1894 in the locality of Karolen in the Verro district of the Livonia province, in the family of Orthodox peasants, farm labourers at the Karolen estate, Mikhail Yakovlevich and Maria Konstantinovna Pettay. He finished the theological school in Riga, and in 1910 entered the Riga Seminary, but could not finish it because of the First World War. When the front drew near Riga, the seminary was moved to Nizhny Novgorod. Here the students had no dormitory and had to rent lodgings, sometimes the whole stipend going on rent. Those could continue to whom money was sent from home, but Ivan's parents had none, and on 1 May 1915 he had to break off his studies.

In September 1915 he entered the law faculty of the University of Yuryev. The war in progress needed many officers, and on 1 May 1916 Ivan Mikhailovich, though he had a deferment, was mobilized and enrolled as a cadet at the Vladimir military school. After half a year he was sent as an ensign to the front, served in the 245th and 99th infantry regiments and in July 1917 was wounded. Leaving the hospital in December 1917, he returned home to Karolen and helped his parents on the farm, without giving up the thought of giving himself to the service of God as a priest. In the summer of 1918 he asked Bishop Plato (Kulbusch) of Revel to be ordained priest.

On 13 October 1918 he was ordained priest for the church of All Saints in the village of Penuya, in the Pernov district of Livonia. The parish was small and gathered all the Orthodox Estonians of the neighbouring villages. The church, built in 1875, held three hundred people at most. For priestly practice Father John was sent to the church in Karksi-⁠Nuia. In December 1918 he received a letter from home: his mother was dying, and his father ill. After serving the Christmas Liturgy, he left Penuya for the little town of Valk, to reach his parents' house from there. He arrived at Valk at eleven in the evening. In the meantime the whole area had been occupied the day before by units of the Red Army, and a curfew had been set in the town, so that, hardly arrived, Father John was arrested and sent to prison to establish his identity.

The next day the investigator interrogated him and, on the basis of his answers, sent an inquiry to the executive committee of the Karolen volost and soon received an answer confirming the priest's identity. The local authority also characterized him as a defender of the interests of workers and peasants. The workers of the Karolen estate wrote in their turn a petition for the priest's release: "he lived among us and we can boldly testify that he is the son of our comrade Mikhail Pettay and we have seen no fault worthy of punishment". A petition for release was also written by the priest's wife, to which the local authorities added their own request. On 18 January the investigator interrogated him again, with nothing new, and judged that the priest should be kept in custody until calm was established in Latvia. But the leadership decided otherwise: closeness to the workers and the decision of principle for the path of the priesthood were the worst reference in the eyes of the unbelievers who had come to power.

The priest John Pettay was shot on 29 January 1919 and buried in the cemetery of Tartu. The Church commemorates him on 29 January, the day of martyrdom, in the new style, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.