Peter Kanardov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Kanardov (Pyotr Ivanovich Kanardov, also written Konardov), a priest, was born in 1870 in the village of Troitskoe in Moscow province, of a priest's family. Following his father, he finished the seminary, was ordained deacon, then priest. Shortly before his arrest he was assigned to the church of the Nativity of Saint John the Forerunner in the village of Ivanovskoe, Reutov district, where he served until the end of 1936.

On 26 December 1936 he was arrested and held in Butyrka. He was charged with a hostile attitude toward the measures of the party and Soviet power and for this was sentenced to five years of exile in Kazakhstan. He was taken to the station of Shcherbakty, where he met other clergy and laity who had suffered for the Name of Christ. The martyrs did not cease prayer and, as far as they could, regularly served services.

On 20 November 1937 a new arrest followed. Father Peter, with others, was charged with being a member of a counter-⁠revolutionary church-⁠sectarian group made up mostly of clergy and sectarians of all orientations. At the interrogation he categorically rejected any tie with sectarian groups, but did not deny that he had taken part in services held by Orthodox clergy in a dwelling. The NKVD troika of the East Kazakhstan region sentenced him, for counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda, to the supreme penalty. The sentence was carried out on 28 November 1937, at two in the night. On 20 August 2000 the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints.

He is commemorated on 28 November, 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.