Paul Yagodinsky

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Yagodinsky, a priest, was born on 8 December 1879 in the village of Saigushi, in the Ardatov district of Simbirsk province (now Mordovia), in the family of a psalmist. He finished the seminary, married in 1900 and was ordained deacon, then priest, for the village of Shugurovo. They had five sons. He was hard-⁠working, kind and very honest, and did not hide his thoughts about what was happening in the years after the revolution, which is why his name reached the list of participants in the so-⁠called counter-⁠revolutionary kulak uprising of 1919.

In 1929 he was arrested for non-⁠payment of taxes and received eight months of forced labour. After release he again served at Shugurovo, baptized, married, buried, encouraged many and defended the oppressed. In 1930 the church of Shugurovo was closed and the priest arrested. Freed in 1933, he served at the church of Buzaevo in the Bolshie Berezniki district. His wife had died, and he lived in turn with his sons. Once the chairman of the village council told him to leave his trade, give up his rank and take some job. The priest answered: I have not renounced my rank and will not; my faith does not allow it, I will die a priest.

On 5 August 1937 he was arrested for the third time, after a search in which nothing was found. He was accused of taking part in organizing the kulak uprising and of calling the population to terrorist acts against communists. At the interrogation he said he would not give up his rank and that, although a convinced believer, he had carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation. The NKVD troika of the Mordovian Republic sentenced him to death, and he was shot on 3 September 1937, between ten and midnight. He was numbered among the saints by the Council of Bishops of 13-16 August 2000.

He is commemorated on 3 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.