Hieromartyr
Hieromartyr John (Pommer), Archbishop of Riga
1876–1934
Also known as: Сщмч. Иоанн (Поммер), архиеп. Рижский, Иоанн Рижский, Иоанн, архиепископ Рижский и всея Латвии, Янис Поммер, Jānis Pommers
A Latvian-born bishop of the Russian Church who from 1921 was Archbishop of Riga and All Latvia and won legal recognition for the Latvian Orthodox Church; he was tortured and murdered at his country house near Riga on the night of 12 October 1934.
Hieromartyr John (Jānis Pommers) was born on 6 (19) January 1876 into a Latvian Orthodox peasant family. After the Riga Seminary he studied at the Kiev Theological Academy, became a monk in 1903 and graduated in 1904. He served as seminary inspector in Vologda, rector of the Lithuanian Seminary in Vilnius, and from 1912 as a bishop in Slutsk and Taganrog; in 1917–1918 Patriarch Tikhon sent him to Tver and then to Penza as archbishop.
In 1921 Patriarch Tikhon appointed him Archbishop of Riga and Latvia with broad autonomy for the Latvian Church. To secure the Church's legal registration he stood for and was repeatedly elected to the Latvian parliament (Saeima). He kept the Latvian Church in canonical union with the Moscow Patriarchate and lived in poverty in a basement room of Riga Cathedral.
On the night of 11–12 October 1934 he was tortured and shot at his country house by Lake Ķīšezers, and the house was set on fire; the crime was never solved. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church glorified him on 17 July 2001, and his relics were moved to Riga's Nativity Cathedral on 4 October 2003. He is commemorated on 29 September / 12 October.