John Troyansky

Holy Hieromartyr John (Ivan Efimovich Troyansky, in the world) was bishop of Velikiye Luki and Toropets. He was born on 10 November 1862 in the village of Novokleonskoe, Tambov province, and was shot on 4 September 1937 at Toropets. The Russian Church numbered him among the saints in 2000, at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August, among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 22 August by the old calendar.

He was born into the family of a deacon. In 1879 he finished the second theological school of Tambov and in 1885 the Tambov seminary. He was ordained priest on 10 September 1884, according to our record, a date which does not fit with the completion of the seminary. For many years he served in parishes. He was widowed.

In 1922 he joined the Renovationist movement, and in December 1922 was consecrated by Renovationist bishops as bishop of Sasovo. In November 1924 he broke relations with the Renovationists, and they forbade him to serve. At the beginning of 1925 he repented. On 3 March 1925 he was consecrated bishop of Akmolinsk and Petropavlovsk, vicar of the Omsk diocese (according to other data, he was received in his existing rank, as a bishop consecrated by bishops of the old line). In 1930 he was appointed bishop of Buguruslan, but the appointment was cancelled. From 9 March 1932 he was bishop of Rybinsk, but did not take the see, since he was arrested soon after the appointment and sentenced to three years of exile.

On returning from exile, on 24 June 1935, he was appointed bishop of Velikiye Luki and Toropets and lived in the town of Toropets, in the Kalinin region. He often served in the churches and preached. In his sermons he spoke of the undoubted existence of God, of the great significance in a person's life of holiness and the saints, and of wonderworking icons, and proved the truth of the miracles worked through the prayers of the saints and through the believer's turning to the wonderworking image. The authorities viewed very badly the bishop's care for children, considering that he "lured" them into the church by giving them sweets and gingerbread.

He took an active part in petitions to reopen the closed churches of Toropets. He firmly opposed Renovationism and, after his arrest, said at the interrogation that lately four churches of the Tikhonite orientation had been added in the Velikiye Luki diocese, at the expense of the Renovationists. From January 1936 he was bishop of Ostashkov, vicar of the Kalinin diocese, but continued to live in Toropets, so that this appointment may be considered nominal, or it was cancelled.

On 23 July 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Toropets prison. On 31 August the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 4 September 1937.