Palladius Popov

Holy Hieromartyr Palladius (Palladius Ivanovich Popov) was a priest at Gam, in the Izhma district, born on 27 January 1879 in the village of Ustye, Vologda province, and shot between 22 and 25 September 1937 at Izhma. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church numbered him among the saints and included him in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the twentieth century by decision of 6 October 2001. His commemoration is on 23 September (10 September by the old calendar).

He was born into a priest's family. In 1902 he graduated from the Arkhangelsk seminary in the second category. From 1903 to 1905 he studied at the veterinary institute in Kazan. From 1906 to 1913 he was a teacher at a two-⁠class school in the village of Siziabsk. In 1913 Bishop Nathanael (Troitsky) of Arkhangelsk and Kholmogory ordained him priest for the church of the Presentation of the Lord at Gam. From 1913 he was teacher of religion and head of the parish school at Gam. From 1914 he was teacher of religion at the two-⁠class parish school of Mokhcha. From 1917 to 1918 he was teacher of religion and teacher at the pedagogical courses of Mokhcha and at the village school of Gam. After 1918 he lived in the village of Gam and was priest of the church of the Presentation at Gam.

In 1933 he was called to account under article 59, point 12, of the criminal code, but was not convicted. He was arrested in the village of Gam on 31 July 1937 and held in the Izhma prison. He was accused of having, after the publication of the new constitution, systematically carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation among the collective farmers, misinterpreting the constitution, and of awaiting war and the fall of Soviet power. He was sentenced on 21 September 1937 by the NKVD troika of the Komi Republic, under article 58, point 10, to death. He was shot in the village of Izhma between 22 and 25 September 1937. The place of burial is not exactly known.

His wife, Lydia Stepanovna, came from the village of Lasta in the Izhma district. They had no children. After her husband was shot she stayed in the village of Gam, in one of the rooms of the priest's house, where a peasant dispossessed earlier had been placed to live with his family. On 23 September 2017, eighty years after the shooting of the priests Palladius Popov and John Pavlovsky, a veneration cross was set up at the place of their death at Izhma. Maria, Palladius's sister, was married to Deacon John Pavlovsky, himself a holy hieromartyr (John Petrovich Pavlovsky). He had other brothers and sisters: Nikolai (priest), Claudia (wife of Priest Alexander Titov), Alexandra (married to a deacon), Theognostus (psalm-⁠reader), Peter and Taisia.