Peter Rochev of Belogorye

Saint Peter Rochev 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 also the Athos of the Urals. The Azbyka page says nothing of Peter individually.

Archimandrite Varlaam (in the world Vasily Efimovich Konoplev) was born in 1858 in a family of priestless Old Believer peasants, in the Yugo-⁠Knaufsky plant of the Osa district of Perm province. He himself described in his autobiography the search for truth: he learned to read at ten, prayed with the Old Believer elders, then read Scripture much and asked God with tears to show him in which Church and through which pastors the grace of the Holy Spirit works. After an event on a Sunday of All Saints, when he asked for rain as a sign and then learned on the road that it had rained during a moleben at the White Mountain, he joined the Orthodox Church in the nineties, with his father, brothers and other relatives, nineteen people in all. In 1893 he was tonsured a rasophore and settled on the White Mountain, where those wishing for monastic life gradually gathered; in 1894 he was tonsured a monk, ordained hierodeacon, then hieromonk, and directed the new missionary monastery. He restored the services according to the typikon and preaching morning and evening.

In August 1918 the Bolsheviks took possession of the monastery: they scattered 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, hieromonks, hierodeacons and novices also received martyrdom, among them Peter Rochev; 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 by the Council of Bishops in August 2000.

Saint Peter is commemorated on 25 August, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 14 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, in the new style.