Nicholas Pomerantsev

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Pomerantsev was a priest in the Moscow region and died in a camp on 16 August 1938.

He was born on 11 November 1881 in the village of Spasskoye on the Setun in the Moscow district, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Peter Semyonovich Pomerantsev. In 1897 he finished the Zaikonospassky theological school, in 1904 the Moscow seminary. Until 1917 he was a reader at one of the churches of Moscow, and in that year was ordained priest for the Vladimir church in the village of Ostashevo, Bronnitsy district, where he served until 1929. In 1929 he was moved to the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Novlyanskoye, Volokolamsk district.

In 1931 the priest hid from the authorities' inventory a part of the church's vessels, for which he was sentenced to the maximum penalty under this article, three months of corrective labour. Returned from prison, he served in the church until the new wave of persecution. On 3 November 1937 witnesses on duty told the NKVD investigators that at the time of the Supreme Soviet elections the priest had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity: he allegedly said that the collective farmers must first be fed and shod and only then called to meetings, for they were dying of hunger; that "he is coming again to throw dust in the collective farmer's eyes"; and that the plans given to the collective farm were beyond its strength and led to poverty. On the same day Father Nicholas was arrested and imprisoned. On 11 November he was interrogated about collecting signatures for the right to go to houses with services of supplication and about counter-⁠revolutionary agitation; he denied it and was told he was lying, but repeated that he had not carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation. He was taken to the Taganka, and on 22 November he was asked mostly who had ordained him and when, and why he had been tried before; he repeated that he did not admit guilt. On 23 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. He died in detention on 16 August 1938 and was buried in an unknown place.

He is remembered on 16 August, on 5 September (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.