Paul Gayday

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Gayday, a priest of Odessa, was born on 15 January 1886 in Izmail, in Bessarabia (some documents say Galati); relatives have evidence that he was baptized in the Edinoverie church of Izmail. In youth he received counsel from the holy Righteous John of Kronstadt, who left him the command: go to Archpriest Jonah Atamansky in Odessa and follow in his footsteps. After John's death, Paul came to Odessa and served as a psalmist. He wished to become a monk, but Father Jonah did not bless it and found him a wife instead, a pious maiden of noble family, Capitolina Dmitrievna, who was about fifty, while Paul was a little over twenty; he married them but ordained that they live as brother and sister. Later they took two little girls, Stesha and Vera, into their care.

He was ordained deacon, then priest, and served at the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Odessa. The people of Odessa loved him for his sermons, his living faith, his love of people and his hard work. His influence on the people was noticed by the authorities, who moved him to a remote farmstead, then to the village of Kapaklievka. He served the Liturgy daily, prayed molebens for the sick and read prayers over those afflicted by spirits, and the sick came from all the surrounding towns and many were healed.

On 30 April 1929 he was arrested for practising healing and for deceptions meant to arouse superstition, and exiled to Turukhansk in Krasnoyarsk territory for three years. His wife, his adopted daughters and some twenty spiritual children followed him; they lived by gathering wild onions, burning lime, felling timber and washing linen. In 1933 he was freed and moved to Leningrad, where he served at the church of Saint George, but he was arrested again for belonging to the Union of the Archangel Michael and held at Kresty. A furious sick man was put into his cell, who calmed down when the priest prayed. The Leningrad NKVD sentenced him in 1933 to three more years at Turukhansk, but being gravely ill, in 1934 he was moved to Akmolinsk.

There he came into prison, fell ill and kept the Nativity fast despite the mockery. Denying guilt, he went on a hunger strike. Searches of his home and those of his spiritual children turned up a great deal of tea, and the priest was accused of speculation. On 22 January 1936 he was sentenced to ten years in a camp and sent to Karlag. On 14 April 1937 he escaped from the 5th Nura section, saying that some recidivists threatened to kill him, and was caught the next day, then put in the punishment cell, where he again went on hunger strike. On 31 July he was sent to the Karagan point, where he could no longer go to work because of illness; the administration accused him of raising his temperature artificially. In August 1937 he was arrested again, accused of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation among prisoners. He denied it. On 31 August 1937 the Karaganda troika sentenced him to death. The sentence was carried out on 5 September 1937. The burial place is not known. He was rehabilitated in 1993, under the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

He is commemorated on 5 September and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.