Paul Berezin

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Berezin, a priest, was born in 1866 in the village of Makovnitsy in the Kashin district of Tver province, in the family of the priest Mikhail Berezin. Little is known of his education; he probably finished the seminary and then the history and philology faculty of the University of Warsaw. He returned to Tver province and taught the Law of God at the teachers' seminary in Novy Torzhok. At thirty-⁠seven he was ordained priest, and from then on his life was devoted to service. According to his parishioners, he was an outstanding preacher and spoke at every service. He was widowed early, and his son was able to study unhindered at Leningrad University. In the twenties he served at the Ascension church in the village of Kotovo in the Molokovo district.

In 1929, when the Soviet authorities began a new stage of persecution, Father Paul pointed out in his sermons, with sorrow, the spread of sin, above all abortions, because of which ever fewer children were born. Some women laughed at him. The village children asked him for books to read, and he gave them books on the Law of God, the Sacred History of the Old and New Testament, and moral stories. In January 1929 the school director discovered that pupils were reading such books and confiscated them. Father Paul asked for them back, to no avail. Later he promised the militia not to give children religious literature. On 21 September 1929 the director and a teacher were called to the investigator, and the priest was arrested and held at Bezhetsk. He denied everything he was charged with. The press began a campaign against him and against some peasants, accused of being a nest of kulaks and priests. On 13 January 1930 the Special Board sentenced the priest to three years of exile in the Northern Territory; he reached a northern camp on 23 March, from where he was sent to Mezen in Arkhangelsk region.

He soon sent a petition for release, which was granted, and on 18 July 1931 he returned to Kotovo and served in the same church, living alone: his wife had died, and his son Dmitry, a student, hardly wrote to him. In a letter of spring 1937, Dmitry, who had become a Bolshevik, respected him but said that he belonged to another world.

In the summer of 1937 the authorities decided to strike at the Church. Father Paul was arrested on 27 July 1937 and held at Krasny Kholm. He was accused of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation for sermons in which he spoke of moral decline: he said that depravity in families, divorces and early deaths come from forgetting God. An NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was shot on 7 October 1937.

He is commemorated on 7 October, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, in the new style. He was numbered among the saints in the year 2000.