Porphyry Kolosovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Porphyry Kolosovsky, a priest, served in villages of the Nizhny Novgorod diocese and was shot on 26 November 1937, falsely accused of anti-⁠Soviet activity.

He was born on 9 September 1867 in the village of Dolgoe Pole, Vasilsursk district, Nizhny Novgorod province, in the family of a church servant. He completed three classes at the Nizhny Novgorod Seminary and began his service as a psalmist; in 1893 he was ordained priest. In 1903 he was appointed rector of the church of St Demetrius of Thessalonica in the village of Tolba, Sergach district, a large parish of over three thousand parishioners, where besides shepherding he taught religion to the peasants' children. He received his first award, the epigonation, in 1901, and in 1922 the dean proposed him for the pectoral cross.

In the early 1920s he served in his native village, at the church of the Transfiguration, and later, after becoming a widower, at the church of St Elias in the village of Vargany, Lyskovo district. His two grown daughters lived apart, and Father Porphyry, though old, kept his small household himself.

On 17 September 1937 he was arrested by the NKVD for anti-⁠Soviet activity; in the search of his modest home only service books and personal letters were found. The lonely elderly priest was charged with being an active member of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization led by a priest Nikolsky, with agitating for leaving the collective farms, and with spreading slander about the leaders. After his arrest the testimony of another priest, broken by prison and beatings, who had signed everything the investigator wrote, was used against him, but Father Porphyry did not admit guilt. In the single surviving interrogation record he denied having received any anti-⁠Soviet assignment from the dean or having done any counter-⁠revolutionary work; the investigators could prove nothing.

On 11 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Two weeks later, on 26 November, he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave. He is commemorated on 27 November, on 12 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Nizhny Novgorod and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.