Peter Orlenkov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Orlenkov was a priest of the diocese of Moscow. He was born on 25 December 1876 in the village of Voskresenskoye in the Bronnitsy district, now in the Ramenskoye district near Moscow, and was shot on 16 November 1937 at the Butovo firing range. He was numbered among the saints in 2000, for veneration throughout the Russian Church.

His father, Priest Ismail Orlenkov, also served the Church. In 1890 Peter finished the Donskoye clerical school in Moscow, and in 1896 the Moscow Theological Seminary, and in the same year he was ordained priest. From 1896 to 1930 he served in several churches of the Moscow diocese. In 1930 he was appointed to the church of the Resurrection in the village of Kondrevo, now in the Stupino district. At that time he lived at Olkhovo.

In July 1937 the church was closed under the pretext that the building was unsafe. After its closing Father Peter moved to Kondrevo and lived there until his arrest. He was arrested on 28 October 1937 on a charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and held in the prison at Kolomna.

On 15 November 1937 he was tried by a three-⁠man NKVD tribunal. A woman summoned as a witness stated that on 26 September, near the church, the priest had publicly voiced his displeasure at the closing of the church on a contrived pretext and had said that such arbitrary action contradicted the new Constitution of the USSR. Asked whether he admitted to having carried on sharp counter-⁠revolutionary agitation among the inhabitants of the villages of Senkino and Kondrevo, Father Peter answered that he did not. The tribunal sentenced him to death, and the next day, 16 November, he was shot. His remains lie in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

He was rehabilitated by the prosecutor's office of the Moscow region on 28 June 1989. On 20 August 2000 the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church canonized him as a hieromartyr, on the proposal of the Moscow diocese. His life was written by Archimandrite Damaskin (Orlovsky). He is commemorated in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on the day of his martyrdom: 3 November by the old calendar, which is 16 November by the new.