Peter of Belogorye

Saint Peter of Belogorye, a novice and venerable martyr, is commemorated on 25 August with Archimandrite Varlaam and the murdered brethren of the Belogorye (White Mountain) Monastery, called the Athos of the Urals. The Azbyka page says nothing about Peter individually; his name appears in the list of the novices.

Archimandrite Varlaam (in the world Vasily Efimovich Konoplev) was born in 1858 in an Old Believer family of the priestless kind and sought the truth by reading Scripture and by prayer. After a miracle on a Sunday of All Saints, when he asked for a sign whether grace works through the shepherds of the Orthodox Church, he joined the Church in the nineties through the Mystery of Chrismation, together with his father, brothers and other relatives, nineteen people in all. In November 1893 he was tonsured a rasophore and settled on the White Mountain; in 1894 he was tonsured a monk, ordained hierodeacon and then hieromonk and named head of the new missionary monastery. He restored the services according to rule and preaching morning and evening.

In August 1918 the Bolsheviks took possession of the monastery: they wrecked and defiled the cathedral altar, made a latrine of the archimandrite's cell and a theatre of the icon workshop, where the boy singers were forced to sing worldly songs. Many monks were killed after cruel torments. On 12 (25) August the Red soldiers arrested Archimandrite Varlaam and shot him on the road to Osa. Many monks also received martyrdom, among them the hieromonks Sergius, Elijah, Vyacheslav, Joasaph, John, Anthony, the hierodeacons Micah, Vissarion, Matthew, Euthymius, the monks Barnabas, Demetrius, Sabbas, Hermogenes, Arcadius, Euthymius, Marcellus and the novices John, Jacob, Peter, Jacob, Alexander, Theodore, Peter, Sergius, Alexis. Their graves were hidden by the authorities.

They were glorified in 1998 as locally venerated saints of the Perm diocese and numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the Council of Bishops in August 2000. Saint Peter is commemorated on 25 August and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.