Matthew Kazarin

Holy Hieromartyr Matthew Kazarin (1886-1942), a protodeacon, was born in a psalmist's family at Pokosy, today in Mordovia. He studied at the church school and at the Tambov seminary but did not finish it. In 1930 he was arrested in the Tambov region and sentenced to two years in prison. After his release he served as deacon at the church of Saint Elijah in Michurinsk, with the Venerable Sebastian of Karaganda.

Arrest and camp

On 1 August 1937 he was arrested in the group case of a "church-⁠monarchist insurgent organization", accused of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, of calling peasants against Soviet power and of slandering the party's policy. On 6 December the NKVD troika sentenced him to eight years of camp. After nine months in the Michurinsk prison, on 17 May 1938 he was sent to Karlag, where he did ordinary labour, described as "disciplined and conscientious", then watched a grain store; he was operated on for his stomach and later, ill almost all the time, worked as an orderly. He died on 12 November 1942, of pneumonia and ulcer bleeding. He was numbered among the saints at the Council of Bishops in the year 2000.

He is commemorated on 12 November, the day of his death, in the new style, on 10 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Tambov Metropolis and on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.