John Tomilov

Holy Hieromartyr John Tomilov, a priest, was born on 18 February 1878 in the village of Yeski in the Bezhetsk district of the Tver province, in the family of the priest John Tomilov. After the Tver Theological Seminary he was ordained priest in 1904 for the church in his native village of Yeski, in place of his father, and served in it all his life.

At the beginning of 1931 a case was started against him and some peasants for not paying taxes. On 1 March 1931 the court accused him of having received the task of delivering 30 centners of milk in December 1930 and of not having fulfilled it even after a month and 17 days; his explanation, that the cow had miscarried, was held to be unfounded. He was sentenced to five years of exile, with confiscation of property, but the sentence was not carried out and he stayed to serve in the church.

In the persecution at the end of the 1930s a new case was opened. The secretary of the village soviet wrote a profile for the NKVD, in which he said that the priest carries on counterrevolutionary work through certain people, among them a former nun, that he had said he would serve until the end and had people sleep near the church, which they wanted to take for a club, and that he had formed from the backward ones of the village a choir, through which the discipline of the collective farm falls. On 9 February the witnesses said that the priest spoke about faith in God and in Jesus Christ, and about Soviet power, led by the communist party, that it was the antichrist whose end would soon come. They added that he enjoyed great authority among the people and that, through the sermons in the church, he had drawn some of the faithful.

On 10 February 1938 Father John was arrested and imprisoned at Bezhetsk, where he was interrogated for two days. Asked to whom he had told in September 1937 about the war of Japan with China and the victory of the fascists, he answered: "I read newspapers and take interest in literature, but I made no communication to anyone from the newspaper materials." When told that his guilt was fully established and that he had carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation and spoken in terrorist terms about the leaders, he answered: "I carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation, I made no terrorist statements against the leaders of the party and Soviet power, and therefore I do not admit guilt." On 13 February the NKVD troika sentenced him to death.

The priest John Tomilov was shot on 15 February 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave. The page gives his commemoration on 16 February. The Church commemorates him on 16 February, in the new style, and on the movable days of the synaxis of the new martyrs and of the Saints of Tver (18 July).