Paul Sokolov of Kungur

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Sokolov of Kungur, a priest, abbot of the church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God, was born on 2 March 1874 in a priest's family. He followed his father and in 1896 finished the Kaluga seminary. He taught the Law of God for a year at a people's school, then from 1897 in Perm province, first at the church teachers' school in Krasnoufimsk. On 30 January 1900 he was ordained priest at the church of the Nyazepetrovsk plant, in the Krasnoufimsk district, where after three years he became rector and received his first distinction, the hip-⁠cloth. He taught the Law of God at the schools in Nyazepetrovsk and directed the church schools. In 1909 he received the skufia, and in 1911 he was transferred as rector to the church of the Tikhvin Mother of God, at Kungur.

At Kungur he continued fruitful work: for years he was a member of the section of the diocesan school council, assistant dean for the churches of Kungur, was elected delegate to diocesan congresses, and taught the Law of God at the girls' gymnasium and the real school. He directed the two-⁠class church school of the Dormition. In 1912 he received the kamilavka, and on 29 June 1917, for merit, a pectoral cross from the Holy Synod. He also received jubilee medals. He was married to Vera Afanasievna and they had six children: Paul, Lyubov, George, Lyudmila, Mikhail and Nikolai.

In September 1918 Father Paul's life was cut short: he was shot by Red soldiers. There are no documents on how it happened. From talks with old residents of Kungur it is said that the last rector of the Tikhvin church was taken away in an unknown direction and disappeared. Almost all the town's educated class was shot then; lists of those shot appeared in the newspapers, and a huge common grave was dug in the cathedral yard. At Kungur the priests Vladimir Belozerov and Alexander Kalashnikov were also shot in 1918. In the Perm diocese, in 1918, 123 persons from the clergy were shot. The place of his burial is unknown. He was numbered among the saints in the year 2000.

He is commemorated on 20 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 14 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis and on 11 October (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Chelyabinsk Metropolis, in the new style.