Michael Soyuzov

Saint Michael Soyuzov, hieromartyr and confessor (1869 to 19 October 1922), was an archpriest and rector at Petrograd, convicted for opposing the confiscation of church valuables and died in the prison hospital of typhus. He was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia by decision of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of 25 August 2022. He is commemorated on the day of his death, 6 October Old Style (19 October New Style). The source calls him both hieromartyr and priest-⁠confessor.

Life

He was born in 1869 at Zhernovitsy, in the Ustyuzhna district, Novgorod province, in a priest's family. On 15 April 1875 his father was moved to the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Ozerevo. Michael studied at the church school at Borovichi, graduated from the seminary at Novgorod in 1889 and from the Theological Academy of Saint Petersburg in 1893, with the title of candidate of theology, with the right to seek the master's degree without an oral examination, with the work "The History of Monastic Preaching in Russia in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries". At the request of Saint John of Kronstadt he was appointed psalm reader of the cathedral of Saint Andrew in Kronstadt. In September 1893 he married Antonina Nikolaevna Stefanovskaya, daughter of the cathedral's deacon, and on 10 October he was ordained deacon by Metropolitan Palladius of Petersburg. On 28 April 1895 he was ordained priest and appointed rector of the church of Alexander Nevsky in the Second Cadet Corps and teacher of religion. In 1909 he was raised to archpriest.

After the dissolution of the cadet corps, in 1917, he was moved, at his request, to the church of the Entry into the Temple on the Petrograd side, under Metropolitan Benjamin. On 13 September 1918, at the beginning of the "Red Terror", he was arrested without charges and held in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul fortress; after a month he was released. From 1919 he was rector of the cathedral of Saint Vladimir and, from 1920, dean of the eighth district of Petrograd. In April 1922, in the campaign to confiscate church valuables, the parishioners of the cathedral resisted; on 20 May Father Michael was arrested and on 5 July sentenced on the charge of "spreading criminal appeals of Metropolitan Benjamin" to three years of imprisonment with strict isolation. He did not admit guilt and died in the prison hospital, on 19 October 1922, of typhus. He was buried in the Smolensk cemetery, beside his sister, Anna, near the chapel of Saint Xenia of Petersburg. He was rehabilitated in 1990.

Veneration

He was numbered among the saints by the Holy Synod on 25 August 2022. On 22 December 2022 his relics were found in the Smolensk cemetery and carried to the church of the Resurrection, then to the church of the Smolensk icon of the Mother of God; on 4 February 2023, on the eve of the feast of the new martyrs, they were solemnly taken to the cathedral of Saint Vladimir, before Metropolitan Barsanuphius, where they are today, for veneration. In Saint Petersburg, near the Obukhovo metro station, a wooden church was built in his honour, consecrated on 11 February 2023. On the site of the former grave is a stone monument-⁠cenotaph with his icon engraved.