Hieromartyr Uar (Shmarin), Bishop of Lipetsk

Hieromartyr Uar (Peter Alekseevich Shmarin) was born on 11 October 1880 into a poor peasant family in Tambov province. A local priest paid for his schooling. He married, was ordained deacon in 1904 and priest in 1910, serving on an island in Lake Ladoga; his wife died suddenly of illness in 1918, leaving six children. Returning home, he served in the village of Tyutchevo near Lebedyan, refused repeated demands to renounce his orders, and from 1922 resisted the Renovationist schism, appealing to Patriarch Tikhon in 1923.

On 20 August 1926, after monastic tonsure with the name Uar, he was consecrated Bishop of Lipetsk, serving in the cathedral and later in the Dormition church. In June 1935, after villagers of Studenki prevented the removal of their church bells, he was arrested on false testimony and sentenced to eight years. From 1937 he was held in the Karaganda camp in Kazakhstan, paving roads and then, being ill, working as a bookkeeper. In 1938 he was moved to a barrack of criminals at the Merkele section, who killed him on 23 September 1938. He was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000 and is commemorated on 10 (23) September.