Nicholas Vereshchagin

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Vereshchagin was a priest in the village of Glebovo, in the Tver province, and was shot on 17 October 1937.

He was born on 10 December 1893 in the village of Glebovo in the Staritsa district of the Tver province, in the family of the church servant Michael Vereshchagin. He studied at the Tver seminary and was ordained priest at the time the post-⁠revolutionary persecution had begun. He served in the village of Glebovo, where his father had served too.

In the summer of 1937, when the arrests began, an NKVD worker of Staritsa, collecting data on priests who were to be arrested and destroyed, questioned a peasant of Glebovo, who agreed to lie against the priest and said that in July 1937 collective farmers of "The Workers' Path" came for stone at the church fence and that Father Nicholas had said: "You take the church stone in vain. Know that the end of Soviet power is near; those who do not believe will be sent away, and their leaders destroyed", and that he spoke ill of the collective farms, comparing them to the old corvée. It was also said that, as warden, he had called to the village a stranger, the Pole Stefan Andreevich Podgorny, who had lived in the church guardhouse since 1930. The same man was questioned on the same day and, fearing for his position, in great weakness, agreed to lie against the priest.

The NKVD did not arrest him at once. Only on 20 September was Father Nicholas arrested and imprisoned at Rzhev and questioned the same day. He stood firm, refusing to lie, and the interrogation was short: he admitted that in July stone was taken from the fence, but said that he had not agitated among those working and did not admit guilt. On 15 October an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 17 October 1937 Father Nicholas Vereshchagin was shot. In August 2000 the Jubilee Council of Bishops numbered him among the new martyrs and confessors.

He is remembered on 17 October, on 18 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, and on 7 February (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors, in the new style.