Stephen Khitrov

Holy Hieromartyr Stephen Khitrov was born on 7 April 1851 in the village of Gulyaevskoe, Irbit district, into a priest's family, and died in 1920. He finished the first class of the Perm seminary and in 1869 was appointed reader at the church of Saint Demetrius in the village of Taushkanskoe. On 16 May 1871 he was ordained reader by Bishop Vassian of Yekaterinburg, and two years later was transferred to the Epiphany church in the village of Krasnoslobodskoe. On 14 July 1882 he was ordained a deacon. He had married Maria Serafimovna and they had two children, Nicholas and Glafira. After many years at Krasnoslobodskoe he was moved with his family to the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Tropinskoe. In 1914 he was ordained a priest and sent to the Dormition church at Mednyi Rudnik, and on 6 August 1917 moved to the Transfiguration church at Gulyaevskoe. After the revolution he served at the Epiphany church in Krasnoslobodskoe.

During the civil war he ended up in the White Army, as a hospital priest. On returning to his native village he was arrested, although 526 parishioners petitioned for his release. He was shot on 16 August 1920, on a charge of "counter-⁠revolutionary activity". He was canonized in 2002. He is commemorated in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (7 February, movable), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Yekaterinburg (11 February) and on 18 August (new style).