Patrick Petrov

Saint Patrick Petrov, a hieromonk and venerable confessor, was born on 5 March 1877 in the village of Dyakonovo in the Kologriv district of Kostroma province, in the family of the peasant Pyotr Petrov, and at baptism was named Pavel. In 1899 he finished the company school of the Shadropol regiment. Resolved to devote his life to God, he entered Valaam Monastery on 25 September 1904, was received as a novice on 2 June 1910 and was tonsured a monk on 25 June 1915 with the name Patrick. In the monastery his obedience was carpentry. From 1917 he struggled at the monastery chapel on Vasilyevsky Island in Petrograd and was ordained hieromonk.

From 1929 the Soviet authorities intensified the persecution of the Church. In 1931-1932 the OGPU learned that in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, at the former Novodevichy Convent and at the former Kievan dependency, counter-⁠revolutionary elements were gathering, carrying on agitation and spreading church-⁠monarchist hymns, verses and akathists. To liquidate them, searches were carried out and fifty people were arrested. Among them, on 18 February 1932, Hieromonk Patrick was arrested. At his interrogation on 11 March he said that he taught the faithful obedience to the Orthodox Church and that nearly two hundred people came to church. He added that the five monks of the community lived in the same house, with a common kitchen, where they talked of the coming fall of Soviet power, but he could not remember who had started the talk.

On 22 March 1932 the OGPU Collegium sentenced him to three years of exile in Kazakhstan, and he was sent to the Kurdai district of the Alma-⁠Ata region. Hieromonk Patrick Petrov died in exile on 24 March 1933 and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 24 March, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 22 August (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam, in the new style.