Peter Korelin

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Korelin (Pyotr Ivanovich Korelin), a priest, was born in 1864. In 1883 he finished the Perm seminary and was named teacher at the school in Novopyshma. On 13 July 1886 he was ordained priest for the church of the Presentation in the village of Ilenskoe, Irbit district, and on 12 April 1888 was moved to the Epiphany church in the village of Kochnevskoe, Kamyshlov district. From 14 November 1904 he served at the Holy Trinity cathedral of the Kamensky plant in the same district. In 1914 he was appointed acting dean of the second district of the Kamyshlov district.

At the beginning of the twentieth century a weakening of parish life was felt everywhere, and Father Peter sought to renew it through the enlightenment of the people: he ordered books and pamphlets for the people, founded a district library, to which seven periodicals came, and held clergy meetings where what was read was discussed. But all these means, because of the social and spiritual crisis that had begun, could help only a few. In 1918 he was arrested and held in Yekaterinburg, then, together with Bishop Hermogenes of Tobolsk, shut in the dirty and dark hold of the steamer Oka.

The Azbyka page includes him in a synaxis with the Holy Hieromartyr Hermogenes, bishop of Tobolsk and Siberia (Dolganev), with Ephraim Dolganev, Mikhail Makarov and the martyr Konstantin Minyatov. In the night of 13 June the train reached Tyumen, from where the arrested were taken onto the steamer Ermak. The next evening the steamer stopped near the village of Pokrovskoe, where all except the bishop and the priest were moved to the Oka, then put ashore and shot. Preparing for a clash with the troops of the Siberian government, the Bolsheviks built fortifications on the Ermak, at which they made the bishop and the priest work. Carrying earth, sawing boards and hammering nails, the bishop sang Paschal hymns all the time. On 15 June, at ten in the evening, the bishop and the priest were moved to the Oka.

Father Peter preceded the hierarch in martyrdom. About midnight on 16 June 1918 he was brought on deck, two heavy granite stones were tied to him and he was thrown into the river. At half past midnight Bishop Hermogenes too was brought out of the hold; he prayed until the last moment, and when the executioners tied the stone with a rope, he gently blessed them. The bishop's remains were found on 3 July by a peasant and taken afterward to Tobolsk.

He is commemorated on 29 June, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg and on 23 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Tobolsk Metropolis, in the new style.