Michael Rozov

Holy Confessor Michael Rozov, a priest, was born on 19 March 1889 in the village of Pokrovskoe na Lunke, Danilov district of Yaroslavl province, to the psalm-⁠reader Pyotr Rozov and his wife Evdokia, and was baptized the next day. In 1910 he graduated from the Yaroslavl theological seminary and was sent as reader to the church in the village of Troitskoe na Volchikh Gorakh. On 5 December 1910 he was ordained a priest for the Kazan church in the village of Arkhangelskoe na Kasti, Danilov district, where he served until his arrest. For the peasants Father Michael was teacher of religion, and physician, and veterinarian, and adviser in matters of farming.

The first time he was arrested was in 1923 and accused of "insulting the person of the chairman of the volost executive committee". In 1930 he was arrested again on a charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and spent seven months in the prison of Danilov. On 18 November 1930 he was arrested once more and accused of agitation against the collective farms, of anti-⁠Soviet sermons from the ambo, and of having said that money must be collected to pay the church's tax. On 30 November the investigator questioned him. Father Michael answered that he met with the faithful, but in these meetings matters of the Church were discussed; the measures of Soviet power were not discussed in the village.

On 31 January 1931 the OGPU troika sentenced him to three years of exile in the Russian North. He was sent to the Arkhangelsk region, where he worked with other exiles at felling timber. After the end of the exile he settled in Yaroslavl. He tried to find work, but no one would take him; in the end he took a job as a sweeper at the Moscow station, then at a psychiatric hospital. The years of prison and exile undermined his health, and in September 1940 he was dismissed on grounds of disability. The priest Michael Rozov died on 21 January 1941. He is commemorated on 21 January, the day of his death, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day) and, on 5 June, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl.