Peter Snezhnitsky

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Snezhnitsky (Pyotr Andreevich Snezhnitsky), a priest, was born in 1880 (according to other data, in 1879). He attended the spiritual school at Kamyshlov, and in 1892 entered the Perm seminary, but did not finish it. Having a good voice, he was invited to sing in the bishop's choir at Yekaterinburg, where he sang for several years. In November 1897 he was appointed psalmist at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Shmakovskoe, Irbit district, and in June 1898 received the tonsure as reader. In 1903 he was ordained deacon for the church of Saint Elijah at the Beryozovsky plant, Yekaterinburg district.

At Beryozovsky he had to go through a trial: he was accused of not fulfilling his duties. In 1907 a branch of the Union of the Russian People had been founded there; the emperor Nicholas II sent the members a telegram, and they decided to hold a moleben with a procession from the church to the church school, on 25 April, but the priest, deacon and psalmist who served that day, for various reasons, could not take part. A conflict broke out, and the local leadership of the Union wrote a complaint to Bishop Vladimir. Deacon Peter explained that on that day he had served the Liturgy from four in the morning, then Paschal molebens in homes, baptized infants and by evening was exhausted; he added that he had served a moleben in church, with the priest, at the opening of the branch of the Union, on 18 March, and that he could not be counted an opponent of the Union. Even so, the bishop, to avoid further conflict, moved the clergy to other parishes. On 7 August 1907 Father Peter was moved to the church of the Nizhne-⁠Barancha plant.

Soon he was ordained priest and named to the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Rychkovskoe, Verkhoturye district, where in 1910 he was also religion teacher at the primary school. In February 1917 he was moved to the village of Shogryshskoe, Irbit district, and then served at the church of Saint John the Forerunner in Bolshoe Trifonovo, Irbit district, a small clergy of priest, deacon and psalmist. In 1918, in the time of the disturbances in the Perm region, the priest Peter Snezhnitsky was shot by the Bolsheviks at the Egoshino station. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints on 17 July 2002.

He is commemorated on 20 September, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 11 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg, in the new style.