Vladimir Pokrovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir Pokrovsky was a priest in the village of Burtsevo in Moscow province, where he served more than forty years, and was shot on 26 February 1938 at Butovo.

He was born on 6 June 1871 in Moscow, in the family of the priest Alexis Pokrovsky. After the seminary he was ordained priest in 1894 for the Ascension church in the village of Burtsevo, Vereya district. In 1937, when the merciless destruction of the Church began, the NKVD investigators, to give it an appearance of legality, called duty witnesses. Two of them, a priest of a neighboring village and a psalm-⁠reader, said that Father Vladimir was a fierce enemy of Soviet power, gathered monastics and fanatics around him, and in November 1937 had said of the new constitution that it was a scrap of paper written to deceive the people.

On 26 January 1938 he was arrested, held at Taganka and questioned the next day. Asked whether he had been deprived of the right to vote, he answered that he had, as a priest. To the charge of anti-⁠Soviet activity he answered that he had never engaged in any such thing. The investigation ended there. On 21 February an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and Priest Vladimir Pokrovsky was shot on 26 February 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at Butovo.

The saint is commemorated on 26 February 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.