Nicholas Pospelov

Nicholas Pospelov (Nikolai Pospelov) was a priest, an archpriest, born on 28 February 1885 in the village of Pesiane, in the Pokrov district of the Vladimir province, in the family of Basil Vladimirovich and Catherine Antonovna Pospelov. He was shot at the Butovo firing range in 1938, as one of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church.

His mother, Catherine, was the daughter of the priest Anthony Krylov. Her family had five daughters, four married to seminary graduates who became priests, while the fifth, Catherine, was given to a layman, Basil Vladimirovich, who worked at the state treasury, because she had a weak heart and her mother feared that a priest might be left a widower. Their son, Nicholas, followed the priestly path and received the crown of martyrdom in the Communist persecution. He is commemorated in the synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, the synaxis of the saints of Moscow and the synaxis of the new martyrs of the land of Vladimir.