Nicholas Rozov

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Rozov was an archpriest at Romanov-⁠Borisoglebsk, in the Yaroslavl province, and died in a camp in the Urals on 23 December 1938.

He was born in 1892 in the village of Voronye in the Kostroma province, in the family of a postal employee. After the Yaroslavl seminary he was a reader, and in 1916 he was ordained priest for the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in the town of Romanov-⁠Borisoglebsk. After a year he moved to the Resurrection Cathedral. In 1930 he received the rank of archpriest, and in 1938 he was arrested.

First he was charged with "strong influence" on the parishioners, by which he had "obtained high attendance" at the church. Indeed the priest's authority was very great and did not diminish even after the arrest. The warden of the cathedral, warned that it was dangerous to go on working in the church, answered that his spiritual father, Father Rozov, the former rector, had bidden him not to leave the cathedral until its closing and that, as a believer, he must fulfil this bidding, no repression being able to make him leave his post. Further Father Nicholas was charged with subversive activity: sermons condemning atheism, not accepting the closing of churches, "drawing workers and collective farmers into religious communities", "turning away from everything Soviet", "calls to baptism", spreading church literature, raising children in a religious spirit, helping the exiled and imprisoned clergy and the families of the repressed, and so on. The solemn consecration of churches taken back from the Renovationists was regarded as an anti-⁠Soviet attack; services at homes, as an "effective weapon against atheism and communism"; prayer for rain, as "using a supposed calamity to strengthen religion among the people"; attendance at churches was proof of work to break up the collective farms.

The archpriest Nicholas Rozov was sentenced to eight years in a camp. During the inquiry he was held in the Yaroslavl prison, where he was subjected to cruel tortures, but he signed no testimony. In October 1938 he reached the camp in the settlement of Katomysh, near Solikamsk, and died there on 23 December of the same year.

He is remembered on 23 December, on 14 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Simbirsk, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.