Zinovy Sutormin

Holy Hieromartyr Zinovy Sutormin was a priest in the village of Verkh-⁠Ulbinsk, Tomsk province, and was beheaded with an axe by a band of Red soldiers on 23 January 1920.

Zinovy Evstafievich Sutormin had been, before the priesthood, a medical orderly in the Siberian Cossack army. In 1901 he was ordained deacon for the church of the Resurrection in Semipalatinsk, and in 1911 priest for the church in Verkh-⁠Ulbinsk, Zmeinogorsk district, and appointed rector. In his time a new stone church in the name of Saint Nicholas was begun, completed and consecrated in 1913. In 1912 his wife died, leaving him in charge of five children. In 1919 the priest of Georgievka asked the bishop to move him to a richer parish, because of his large family; the bishop told him to find someone willing to exchange, and he proposed it to Father Zinovy, who accepted, closing with a good deed the few days left to him.

In January 1920 he came with the younger children to visit his eldest son in the village of Shemonaikha near Ust-⁠Kamenogorsk. On 23 January the village was occupied by a band of Red soldiers, who at once began searches and arrests. Father Zinovy was arrested with other villagers. All those arrested with him were condemned to death and led out of the village. Father Zinovy's head was cut off with an axe, and his body was buried in an unknown common grave, not far from Shemonaikha.

The saint is commemorated on 23 January and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.