Sergius Voskresensky

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Voskresensky was a priest in the village of Dyakovo, today Kolomenskoe in Moscow, and he died in a camp on the White Sea-⁠Baltic Canal on 11 March 1933.

The priest

He was born on 29 July 1890 in the village of Dyakovo, Moscow district, in the family of the priest Sergius Voskresensky and Evdokia Sergeevna. In 1907 he entered the ecclesiastical school at Perervo, then the Moscow Seminary. After graduating, in 1915, he taught literature at a school attached to the Prince Vladimir Convent in the Podolsk district. In 1916 he married Alexandra, daughter of the priest Nicholas Nikolsky of Podolsk, was ordained deacon and served at the convent until 1920. His father died in 1920, and the deacon was ordained priest for the church of Saint John the Forerunner in Dyakovo.

The closed church

The decree of 1918 on the registration of monuments of art and antiquity served as a pretext for closing many churches, among them those of Kolomenskoe and Dyakovo. On 21 June 1923 a commission drew up the act closing the church of Saint John the Forerunner and handing it to the museum department, and on 7 February 1924 the local authorities gave it to the museum. The community asked for its reopening, but Father Sergius had to move to the church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God in Kolomenskoe. There was another church there, of Saint George, and the museum administration asked for the end of services in both, so as not to disturb the leisure of visitors to the estate. The faithful asked to be left at least the Kazan church; on 10 May 1929 the church of Saint George was closed and the Kazan church remained to the faithful. The people loved Father Sergius; he refused no baptism or urgent communion. The peasants of Kolomenskoe were well off, and he took raspberries, apples and cherries to market together with them.

Arrest and death

The authorities could not bear the existence of a large pious village near Moscow whose peasants lived independently and in plenty. Acquaintances warned him of the persecution being prepared and advised him to leave, but he refused. In the night of 15 to 16 March 1932 the OGPU arrested him, together with seven peasants, in the case called "The Warm Company". Witnesses said that the priest told the faithful that a time would come when people would be buried without a funeral service, since the old priests were dying and new ones were not being taught. On 20 March he was questioned and answered that he and the peasants had spoken of the exiled kulaks and their families, but that he had spread no discontent and carried out no agitation, and so did not admit guilt. The inquiry closed on 26 March, charging the village with "kulakism" and the priest with leading an anti-⁠Soviet group which had said that the collective farms would kill religion. On 6 April he was taken to Butyrka, and on 4 August 1932 an OGPU troika sentenced him to three years in a camp, on the White Sea-⁠Baltic Canal near Medvezhya Gora station. In early March 1933 he was put in a cell with thieves, who took his sheepskin coat, then the rest of his clothes, and put him out into a bitter frost. He died of this abuse on 11 March 1933 and was buried in an unknown place.

He is commemorated on 11 March (a movable date) and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow and on 1 November (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Karelia.