Peter Pokrovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Pokrovsky, a priest, was born in 1873 in the village of Kondol in the Petrovsk district of Saratov province, in the family of the priest John Pokrovsky. He finished the Saratov seminary. With his wife, Nadezhda Vasilievna Shchegoleva-⁠Pokrovskaya, he had five children: Sofia (1903), Elena (1908), Boris (1911), Seraphim (1912) and Julia (1915). From 1924 the family lived in Saratov, at the Resurrection cemetery, where Father Peter was priest at the cemetery church.

On 25 July 1928 he was arrested by the OGPU of the Lower Volga region and held in the Saratov isolator, charged with being, as an opponent of Soviet power and its policy of separating the Church from the state, one who carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation among the faithful, accusing the authorities of strangling religion and its servants. He did not admit guilt. By decision of 2 November 1928 of the Special Board he was released and exiled for three years to Tver. After the exile he returned to Saratov and served at the cathedral of the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles.

On 11 October 1936 he was arrested by the NKVD for anti-⁠Soviet agitation and spreading provocative rumours of a supposed persecution of religion by Soviet power. Held in the Saratov prison, he did not admit guilt. On 9 January 1937 he was exiled for five years to Kazakhstan. He served the exile in the settlement of Uspenka, Lozovoe district, East Kazakhstan region, where he was arrested again on 24 November 1937. To the investigator's questions, who said that he carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, he answered each time that he never had. The indictment said that in his hostility to Soviet power he constantly visited the homes of collective farmers and held, under the pretext of memorial meals, drinking sessions which drew them from work. The priest admitted only one case: he had been invited by his landlady to the memorial meal for her husband and after the meal withdrew to his room; he had been to no one else and had made no agitation.

On 2 December 1937 the NKVD troika of East Kazakhstan decided: Pokrovsky to be shot. The sentence was carried out on 30 December 1937, at one in the night. The place of burial is unknown. He was rehabilitated in 1990, 1962 and 1996, for the three files. On 20 August 2000, at the end of the Jubilee Council of Bishops, he was numbered among the saints. His name was added in 2010 to the Synaxis of the Saints of Saratov.

He is commemorated on 30 December, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 12 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Penza Metropolis and on 12 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saratov, in the new style.