Peter Ozeretskovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Ozeretskovsky, a priest, was born on 10 June 1889 in the village of Eganovo in the Bronnitsy district of Moscow province, in the family of the psalmist Alexander Nikolaevich Ozeretskovsky. In 1903 he finished the Don spiritual school and entered the Moscow seminary. After graduating he was a teacher between 1909 and 1912. In 1912 he was ordained priest for the church of Saint John the Forerunner in the village of Novorozhdestveno, Bronnitsy district, where he served twenty-⁠five years, until its closing in 1937.

In the new wave of persecution, in October 1936, the Moscow Regional Executive Committee decided to close and demolish the church at Novorozhdestveno. Father Peter and the chairwoman of the church council, Nadezhda Kislova, went to Moscow, to the Synod, to ask advice. There they were told to write a petition to the Central Executive Committee of the whole Union. On 11 May 1937 the faithful received in reply the decision to close the church. Father Peter moved to serve at the Edinoverie church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Mikhailovskaya Sloboda, Ramenskoe district, but did not serve there long. On 4 September 1937 he was arrested, on the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity, and held at Taganka.

The investigator asked him from what time he had taken the path of counter-⁠revolution. He answered: I never went on the path of counter-⁠revolution. He asked him about the counter-⁠revolutionary deeds of the priest Bogoslovsky, the reader Ilyinsky, the warden Kislova and the activist Evdokimova. He answered that he knew of no such deeds. Asked whether he admitted guilt, he said: No. On 17 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The priest Peter Ozeretskovsky was shot on 21 October 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

He is commemorated on 21 October, 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.