Paul Lyubimov

Holy Confessor Paul Lyubimov, a deacon, was born in 1870 in the village of Legchishchevo in the Serpukhov district of Moscow province, in the family of a church servant. In 1886 he finished the spiritual school at Perervino, and from 1890 he was a psalmist at the church of the Holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian in the village of Metkino, Podolsk district. He married Anna Vasilievna and they had the children Alexandra, Vasily, Sergei, Peter, Natalia and Konstantin, who died at fourteen. On 5 June 1916 he was ordained deacon for the same church, and from 1918 he was a member of the council of the 6th deanery of the Podolsk district.

According to memoirs, unlike his friend the priest Peter Rozanov, he was tall and strong, with a strong, beautiful voice that he often raised in song. He was a diligent householder, did everything with his own hands and, though he lived modestly, remembered those poorer than himself: at Pascha and other great feasts the Lyubimov family baked a great deal of bread and pies for the parishioners. He loved and respected Father Peter Rozanov, with whom he lived side by side, and the families were friends; both were widowed in the twenties.

On 4 February 1930 he was arrested in the case of Archpriest Peter Rozanov. The cause was the indignation of parishioners at the authorities' decision to bury the atheist communist Gorshkov in April 1929 in the churchyard, right by the altar. The clergy were accused of inciting a revolt and undermining Soviet power. At the interrogation the deacon said that, being disenfranchised, he had never spoken against Soviet policy and that on the day of the burial he was at home. On 3 March 1930 all were sentenced to three years of exile in the North, and their families too; Father Paul's children went to Moscow several times and obtained, on 23 June 1930, the cancellation of the exile of the families and of the confiscation. Even so, the family was driven from its own house and moved to the poorest house in the village, a ruined one.

Deacon Paul Lyubimov died in March 1931, in exile in the North of Russia. He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by decision of the Holy Synod of 17 July 2001. He is commemorated 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.