Peter Rozanov

Saint Peter Rozanov, a priest and venerable confessor, was born in 1864 in the village of Andreevskoe in the Zvenigorod district of Moscow province, in the family of the church servant Feodor Rozanov. In 1887 he finished the Moscow seminary, and on 4 January 1888 he was ordained priest and served at the church of the holy unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian in the village of Metkino, Podolsk district. On 24 February 1903 he was named confessor of the clergy of the sixth district of the Podolsk district. In 1919 he received a pectoral cross and soon was raised to archpriest.

In February 1929 the workers of the brick factory at Belye Stolby decided to bury in the churchyard, right in front of the altar, a worker who had been one of the most active atheists in Metkino. While they were digging the grave, the indignant villagers gathered around: Why are you burying a communist by the altar? There is no place here for such as these. They took the workers' shovels and drove them out of the yard. The authorities did not then summon the priest and deacon for interrogation, because everyone knew they had no part in it. Toward the end of 1929 the persecution intensified, and the OGPU began collecting information on the clergy of Metkino, accusing them of meeting in secret and discussing how best to carry out their plans against Soviet power, the collective farms and the other measures. In 1929 Father Peter, coming to the re-⁠election meeting of the village council, did not want to leave, and the candidates proposed by the communists of the brick factory were rejected, others being proposed, among them the church warden.

On 8 October 1929 he was summoned to interrogation and charged with anti-⁠Soviet agitation and hooliganism. He answered that he had made no agitation about the burial, that he had not known the worker would be buried outside the cemetery, and that when the bell was rung he supposed some incident had occurred, but it turned out to be an act of hooliganism. On 5 February 1930 he was arrested together with the deacon Paul Lyubimov and held at Kashira. About the burial he said that he had taken no part. In sermons he told parishioners to raise their children in the fear of God, to love God as the heavenly Father, and the parents to be an example. He had not allowed his daughter to enter the pioneers' organization. All his guilt, he said, was that he had done his duty: services, services on request, teaching parishioners how to bring up themselves and their children. He said he did not admit guilt.

The investigation was closed, and the priest, the deacon and the warden were charged with undermining authority by agitation against the collective farms and the closing of the church. On 3 March 1930 the OGPU Collegium sentenced Archpriest Peter Rozanov, the deacon Paul Lyubimov and the warden of the church of Cosmas and Damian, Gregory Sazin, to three years of exile in the North of Russia. On 30 August 1930 they were sent to the Arkhangelsk region. Archpriest Peter Rozanov and Deacon Paul Lyubimov did not live to complete the term and died in exile.

He is commemorated on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.