Peter Favoritov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Favoritov, a deacon (Pyotr Feodorovich Favoritov), was born in 1867 in the village of Dubrovo in the Uglich district of Yaroslavl province, in the family of a psalmist. Little is known of his life and ministry. After the spiritual school he was for a time a psalmist. Around 1910 he was ordained deacon and served in that rank some twenty years at the church of the village of Porechye, in the Rostov district. The villagers knew him as a calm and thoughtful man to whom one could come for counsel and comfort. He had a family, but at the end of the twenties he was left alone.

On 12 January 1930, in the village of Porechye, the removal of valuables from the church, closed earlier for non-⁠payment of taxes, was ordered. The residents, indignant, gathered in the market square to prevent this sacrilege. Deacon Peter, together with the priests, was called to the church by the militia; they took the Holy Gifts and the antimensia and left without delay. On 10 February 1930 the servants of the church were arrested. Father Peter was charged with anti-⁠Soviet agitation, with using the peasants for counter-⁠revolutionary ends to thwart the measures of the authorities and the party in the village, and with the fact that under his influence the poor rose against the closing of the church, the removal of its valuables and the taking down of the bells. In the investigation he rejected anti-⁠state activity, holding firm, answering questions directly.

On 2 March 1930 Deacon Peter Favoritov was sentenced to five years of exile in the North of Russia. According to relatives, he served the term in the village of Rikosovo, in the Arkhangelsk region, seven kilometres from Arkhangelsk. In the spring of 1931 the sixty-⁠four-⁠year-⁠old old man was mobilized for floating timber on the Northern Dvina, caught cold and died of pneumonia. He was rehabilitated on 5 April 1989.

He is commemorated on 1 November in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolis, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl, in the new style.