Peter Kosminkov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Kosminkov, a priest, was born on 4 January 1887 in the village of Pakhrino in the Podolsk district of Moscow province, in the family of Vasily Petrovich Kosminkov, psalmist at the Holy Trinity church of the village. He finished the spiritual school at Perervino in 1901 and the Moscow seminary in 1907 and was sent as a teacher. In 1910 he was ordained priest and served in churches of the Moscow diocese, and from 1918 at the church of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Bykovo.

Among those arrested in the village of Bykovo, Ramenskoe district, between 1 and 3 November 1937 and held at Taganka in Moscow were the priests John Kesariysky and Peter Kosminkov, the deacon Simeon Krechkov, the church warden Evdokia Safronova and members of the church council Peter Piskarev-⁠Molokov, Alexander, Ekaterina and Dmitry Chilikin. Father Peter was told at his interrogation: You are arrested for counter-⁠revolutionary activity. He answered: I never carried on counter-⁠revolutionary activity and could not have. Of the counter-⁠revolutionary group of churchmen in Bykovo, of which he was held to be one of the organizers, he said that he belonged to no group and did not know any. He knew nothing of organizers or illegal meetings. The deacon answered likewise, without accusing others or himself.

On 15 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced to death the priests John Kesariysky and Peter Kosminkov and the deacon Simeon Krechkov. The laymen Alexander Chilikin and his son Dmitry received ten years in a camp, and Peter Piskarev-⁠Molokov, Evdokia Safronova and Ekaterina Chilikina eight years. The three clergymen were shot on 16 November 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow. Evdokia Safronova died in the camp on 25 August 1938, and Peter Piskarev-⁠Molokov on 9 April 1938.

He is commemorated on 25 November, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.