Nicholas Sadovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Sadovsky was a priest in the village of Vodopyanovo, in the Voronezh province, and was shot on 1 June 1938 in a camp in the Far East, together with Archbishop Onuphrius of Kursk, Bishop Anthony of Belgorod and other priests.

The Azbyka page holds the life of this numerous group, beginning with that of Archbishop Onuphrius (Gagalyuk); here we tell what is proper to Father Nicholas.

He was born on 30 October 1894 in the village of Vodopyanovo in the Voronezh province, in the family of the priest Alexander Sadovsky. After the Voronezh seminary he was ordained priest in 1917 and served at the church in Vodopyanovo. In the summer of 1935 the chairman of the district committee proposed to the Orthodox community to repair the church, and Father Nicholas called workers who began the work. After three days the local NKVD chief burst into the church and drove the workers out. Father Nicholas had to go to the head of the district committee and ask that a commission be sent to draw up an official document on the need for repairs, with a representative of the committee; on 16 June three members of the commission came, without the committee's representative, and the priest told them he could not work so. On 25 July 1935 he was arrested and imprisoned at Lipetsk. Besides the episode with the commission, he was reproached with a conversation of 8 April 1935 with a villager, at whose house was a Red Army commander, who asked him whether God exists; Father Nicholas answered that He does, the discussion passed to the situation of the Church, where the priest listed the injustices done by the authorities, of which the commander afterwards informed the NKVD.

The file was sent to the special collegium of the Voronezh regional court, and Father Nicholas was moved from Lipetsk to Voronezh. On 23 October 1935 the closed session of the court took place, which sentenced him to eight years in prison. He was held first at Voronezh, then sent to a labour camp in the Khabarovsk territory. In February 1938 a new case was opened against him and the other clergy in the camp, on the basis of false testimonies of some prisoners; on 17 March 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced them to death, and on 1 June 1938 they were shot and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is remembered on 1 June, on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk, on 23 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of Lipetsk, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.