Victor Morigerovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Victor Morigerovsky was a priest in the village of Cherlenkovo in Moscow province and was shot on 7 March 1938 at Butovo, together with the church warden of his church, Irina Smirnova.

He was born on 17 April 1872 in the village of Mineevo in the Dmitrov district, in the family of the priest John Morigerovsky. He finished the theological school in 1889 and the Bethany seminary in 1896, and in 1901 he was ordained priest for the church of Saint Nicholas in Cherlenkovo, Volokolamsk district. In the sixteenth century the village had had a men's monastery attached to the Joseph-⁠Volokolamsk monastery, whose church later became a parish church.

In 1931 he was arrested for refusing to perform duties to the state and sentenced to two years in a camp; he appealed and was acquitted. In 1933 he was arrested again, accused of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, and an OGPU troika sent him for three years to Kazakhstan. He returned in June 1934 and served again at the church of Saint Nicholas.

At the end of the thirties the NKVD was gathering information on those who were to be arrested. On 22 January 1938 a former priest of the church, Peter Rozov, who had left the ministry in 1937, was questioned. He ascribed to Father Victor harsh words about Soviet power and the arrests of priests, a sermon urging the faithful to support the arrested, and words about the constitution and about taxes. On 11 February the arrest note was drawn up, containing further false testimony, and on 16 February the priest was arrested and held at Volokolamsk. He denied everything and said the testimony against him was false. Arrested with him was the church warden Irina Alexeyevna Smirnova, of whom the note said that she kept close ties with the priest, gathered the faithful and organized collections for the church and clergy.

On 27 February an NKVD troika sentenced both to death. Priest Victor Morigerovsky and the warden Irina Smirnova were shot on 7 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing ground.

The saint is commemorated on 7 March and, in the new style, on 29 May (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.