Sergius Rozanov

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Rozanov was a priest in the Dmitrov district near Moscow and was shot at Butovo on 13 November 1937.

He was born in 1905 in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Alexis Rozanov of the church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Bely Rast. He entered the seminary, but studied there only two years, as his studies were interrupted by the revolution of 1917 and the persecution that followed. From 1923 to 1925 he was watchman of the church of the Archangel Michael in his native village, and from 1926 psalm-⁠reader there. In 1927 he was ordained deacon for the church of the village of Ilinskoe, Dmitrov district. In 1931 he was called into the rear militia and returned after a year to the same church. In 1933 he was ordained priest for the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Yakot. In 1936 he was moved to the church of the Protection in the village of Kikino, and after half a year to the church of Saint Elijah in Ilino.

Father Sergius was arrested on 10 October 1937 and imprisoned at Taganka. He rejected all the accusations: that he had carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation among collective farmers, that he had foretold famine and crop failures in order to weaken work discipline, that he had carried on religious propaganda among pioneer children. False witnesses were then called: a church watchman said that the priest drew collective farmers from their work by telling them to pray since the year would be barren in any case, as Scripture says; another told that at Epiphany the priest, going about the village with the molieben, had told a young man he did not see him in church. On 11 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 13 November he was shot and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range near Moscow.

He is commemorated on 13 November and, in the new style, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.