Peter Vyatkin

Holy Hieromartyr Peter Vyatkin, a priest of the Edinoverie church (of the same rite) in the Perm diocese, was shot by the Bolsheviks in the autumn of 1918 before the eyes of his wife. He is numbered in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.

He was born on 16 January 1882 in the village of Karabai, Ilyinsky district, Perm province, in an Edinoverie peasant family, of Dimitri Ermolaevich and Paraskeva Vyatkin; the family already had a seventeen-⁠year-⁠old son. He was baptized in the village of Krivets with the name Peter, and at twelve he finished the district zemstvo school. In Krivets he met Elena, who became his wife. They had three children: Raisa, Maria and Michael.

In 1904 he began to serve in the church as a psalmist at the church of the Archangel Michael in Sitnikovo, Okhansk district. After three years he was ordained deacon, and on 14 May 1908 a priest of an Edinoverie church. In January 1912 he was sent to the All-⁠Russian Edinoverie congress in Petrograd. In 1914 Bishop Andronic of Perm, who gave special care to the Edinoverie communities, appointed him rector of a parish. In 1915 he acted as dean of the Perm Edinoverie district, and in 1917 he was appointed dean in full standing.

In the autumn of 1918 the family lived in the village of Sretenskoe. There the Reds seized Father Peter and shot him before his wife's eyes, while the children were held in a room from which they tried to climb out through the window. He was buried next to the house, under the windows of his study. The Edinoverie church in the village of Voskresenskoe was burned and the Orthodox church was destroyed.

In August 2000 the Council of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to number the priest Peter Vyatkin among the New Martyrs and Confessors. His day of commemoration is 9/22 October (22 October in the new style); he is also commemorated 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.