Victor Voronov

Holy Hieromartyr Victor Voronov was a priest in the village of Zaborovye in Tver province and was shot on 29 November 1937.

He was born on 10 March 1889 in the town of Vyshny Volochyok, Tver province. In 1923 he was ordained priest for one of the churches of the town. At the end of the twenties he was arrested and sentenced to five years for not paying a tax, but he appealed and, being extremely poor and having no property, the sentence was annulled. In 1930 he served at the church in the village of Zaborovye in the Yesenovichi district, where he moved with his wife, Alexandra Fyodorovna, and two sons, five and three years old. In 1936 he was arrested again, accused of keeping registers of births and deaths of parishioners, and was fined. On 15 November 1937 he was arrested again and held at Vyshny Volochyok.

The next day he was questioned. The priest rejected the charges of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, of attempting to organize an anti-⁠Soviet demonstration in 1937 and of spreading rumors about war and the collapse of Soviet power. Asked about going round the houses without the permission of the village council, he answered that in his opinion no permission of the council was needed to perform services in the homes of the faithful. On 27 November an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and Priest Victor Voronov was shot on 29 November 1937.

The saint is commemorated on 29 November and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and on 18 July (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver.