Paul Popov

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Popov, a priest, was born on 13 January 1890 in the village of Sysoi in the Sarai district of Ryazan province, in the family of the peasant Ilya Popov. He studied at the teachers' seminary, sang for a time in the church choir and in 1918 was ordained priest. From 1934 he served at the church in the village of Panskoe, in the Michurinsk district of the Voronezh region.

On 14 September 1935 he was arrested and held at Michurinsk, on the standard charge of the time, anti-⁠Soviet agitation. As false witnesses were brought villagers who knew him little and on-⁠duty witnesses who did not know him at all. The investigators cited as proof the fact that the priest had performed the Mystery of Anointing on many parishioners, which meant, they said, that he was hinting that churches would soon be closed and they would have nowhere to be healed; but since the authorities said publicly that they did not intend to close churches, the priest had slandered Soviet power. At confrontations Father Paul rejected the false witnesses' statements. On 18 December 1935, at a closed session of the travelling session of the special collegium of the Voronezh regional court, the statements were confirmed, and he rejected them again. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and sent to the Khabarovsk territory.

In March 1938 the arrested clergy were moved from the camp to the prison at Blagoveshchensk, together with Archbishop Onuphrius of Kursk and Bishop Anthony Pankeev. On 17 March 1938 an NKVD troika sentenced them to death. On 1 June 1938 were shot and buried in an unknown common grave Archbishop Onuphrius, Bishop Anthony, the priests Hippolytus Krasnovsky, Mitrofan Vilhelmsky, Alexander Yeroshov, Mikhail Deineka, Nikolai Sadovsky, Vasily Ivanov, Nikolai Kulakov, Maxim Bogdanov, Alexander Saulsky, Paul Popov and George Bogoyavlensky, and the psalmist Mikhail Voznesensky.

He is commemorated on 1 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Ryazan and on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk, in the new style.