Maura Moiseeva

Holy Martyr Maura Moiseeva (Maura Vasilievna Moiseeva) was born in 1875 in a village of the Temnikov district of Tambov province, now in Mordovia, into a peasant family. Before the revolution of 1917 she lived in her own house, with a middling farm, and this quiet life lasted until 1937.

Maura went to pray in the church of her village and wished the building to be sound and beautiful. She began to collect money from the parishioners for repairs, and the people responded warmly, hired a team of four carpenters, and the work was done. Soon afterwards Maura was arrested. She was charged with being a member of a religious counter-⁠revolutionary organization, with giving her house for illegal gatherings and with leading the collection of money for the repair of the church.

At her interrogations she spoke only of how she had gathered money for the church and said that she did not count faith in God a crime. The godless authorities did not agree: on 5 August 1937 the NKVD troika of the Mordovian Republic sentenced her to death, and on 10 August 1937 the sentence was carried out. Holy Martyr Maura was numbered among the saints at the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.

She is commemorated on 10 August, the day of her death, in the new style, and with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.