Paul Kosminkov

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Kosminkov, an archpriest, was born in 1875 in the village of Novinki in the Serpukhov district, in the family of the priest Vasily Kosminkov. After the Moscow seminary he was ordained priest and from 1900 served at the Intercession church in the village of Lystsevo, Kolomna district. After the revolution he was raised to archpriest and appointed dean.

On 25 November 1929 he was arrested for the first time and held at Kolomna. On 5 December he was charged with having openly delivered counter-⁠revolutionary sermons from the ambo and with close ties to the former bishop Theodosius, to whom he allegedly gave material help. He wrote on the document that he had only official relations with the bishop and that his sermons concerned only the truths of the faith. On 3 February 1930 the OGPU collegium sentenced him to three years in a camp. He returned to the church at Lystsevo, and in 1933 received the palitsa for zeal. In July 1934 he was appointed to the church of Saint Nicholas in Stolpovo, Zaraisk district.

In the night of 16 to 17 November 1937 NKVD agents came with a search and arrest warrant, ransacked the house and took the reserve ciborium for the Holy Mysteries, and Father Paul was taken to Kolomna, where he was interrogated. His answer: I do not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet and counter-⁠revolutionary activity. On 25 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. Archpriest Paul Kosminkov died in captivity, from the unbearable conditions, on 2 March 1938 and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 2 March (a movable date), on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.