Peter Popov

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Popov, a priest, was born in 1895 in the village of Nikolskoe in the Danilov district of Yaroslavl province, in the family of the priest Alexei Mikhailovich Popov. He finished the spiritual school and in 1918 the Yaroslavl seminary, then taught for three years in a school, until he understood clearly that the Soviet school had been taken over by atheists and would spread within its walls nothing but atheism, poisoning the souls of children. Perfect and ideal teaching, he told himself, is only the pastoral kind, when the Christian ideals and the life of the pastor are one. In 1921 he was ordained priest for the church of the Kazan Icon in the village of Pomogalovo, Romanov-⁠Borisoglebsk district, in place of his father.

Choosing the pastoral path knowingly, he no longer adapted to the persecutors, did not seek to please the powerful and was not frightened by the threats of the sons of this world. During the persecution of 1931 he was arrested for anti-⁠Soviet agitation and sentenced to three years of exile in Kazakhstan. In May 1934 he returned and served at the church in the village of Voznesenie, in the Tutaev district. He remained the same zealous preacher and servant of Christ. A few sermons given shortly before his arrest survive, some of which were brought against him as evidence: the persecutors did not even wish to hide that they were pursuing him for faith in Christ. In one, on the calling of the Apostles, he said that there are moments when God visits the human heart and thought soars like an eagle into the boundless sky, and that the Word of God, living and active, enlightened the first disciples of Christ, changed them and made them masters of souls.

At the interrogation he was asked why he had called people not to accept the cultured and prosperous life that departs from religion. He answered: These convictions took shape in me long ago, since I came to know the Christian teaching, finished the spiritual school and the seminary. Collectivization that is not built on Christian principles I do not recognize, and I preached this to the people. About other charges, for instance that he went about the villages with the cross without the village council's permission, he said that the church warden told him that no permission was needed for processions with the cross and the Gospel, and that he trusted him in his simplicity.

On 9 December 1936 the Special Board of the NKVD sentenced him to three years in a camp and he was sent to the Mariinsk camps of the Kemerovo region. The priest Peter Popov died on 25 May 1937 at the Orlovo-⁠Rozovsky camp point in the Kemerovo region and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 25 May, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl and on 29 August (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kuzbass, in the new style.