Philip Raspopov

Holy Hieromartyr Philip (Philip Kuzmich Raspopov) was a Russian priest, born on 3 October 1875 in the village of Matveevka, Samara province, and killed on 6 December 1919 (23 November by the old calendar) in the Amur region. He was canonized in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which numbered him among the holy hieromartyrs. Our sources show no canonization by the Moscow Patriarchate, although the first sentence of the source says "Russian Orthodox Church". His commemoration is on 23 November by the old calendar.

In 1894 he graduated from the parish school in Buzuluk. After passing the examinations with distinction, he worked as a teacher and psalm-⁠reader in the village of Tupikovka. In 1898 he was transferred to the Amur region, where he served under Bishop Nicodemus of the Amur and Transbaikal. He was a humble and pious man, who worked diligently for the Church, being for a time psalm-⁠reader at the field church of Duya and choir director of the Dormition cathedral of Khabarovsk. He helped in the building of a catechetical school and directed the written work of the Burukan mission station. By his labours he earned the respect of the parishioners and the trust of the church authorities.

On 28 January 1906 Bishop Nicodemus ordained him deacon and appointed him staff deacon of the maritime cathedral of Grado-⁠Nikolaevsk. His inclination and gift for pastoral work were also noticed by the civil authorities, and by a decree of the board of trustees he was appointed teacher of religion at the folk school of Pyankovo. On 8 January 1912 he was ordained priest. He began his pastoral service in the village of Vyatskoe, and then, from 1914, was appointed cleric of the Holy Trinity church in the village of Dolya-⁠Troitskoe (today Troitskoe, Nanai district, Khabarovsk territory), picturesquely set right on the bank of the Amur. At the same time he continued to care for the church of the Protection of the Mother of God at Vyatskoe.

On 23 November (6 December) 1919 red partisans of the detachment of Yakov Tryapitsyn burst into Father Philip's house, where he lived with his wife, Olga Nikolaevna, and seven children, dragged him into the street and hauled him toward the river Amur at Troitskoe. The outward pretext may have been that once Father Philip had sheltered a white officer from the red partisans. They dragged him out in bitter frost, almost without clothes, onto the frozen Amur, where for a long time they mocked and beat him, and at last threw him into an ice hole, where he received a martyr's death.

Only in the early spring of 1920, when the river opened from the ice, did an unknown fisherman find Father Philip's body. But the new authorities did not allow the sufferer to be buried by Christian rite. The fisherman was forced to take the body farther from the shore and let it go with the current of the river.