Hieromartyr Peter (Zverev), Archbishop of Voronezh

IMPORTANT IDENTITY AND DATE CORRECTION: the previous date "February 23" was not confirmed by any source. The full list of Voronezh bishops contains no "Peter" before the 20th century — the only fitting candidate is Archbishop Peter (Zverev), a New Martyr, who died in imprisonment in 1929. Category refined hierarch→hieromartyr. The correct date is January 25/February 7 (day of repose).

Hieromartyr Peter (born Vasily Konstantinovich Zverev) was born February 18 (March 2), 1878, son of a Moscow priest. He graduated from the Institute of History and Philology and the Kazan Theological Academy, taking monastic vows there in 1900. As archimandrite of the Transfiguration Monastery in Belyov (Tula diocese), he was later vicar bishop of Balakhna (Nizhny Novgorod diocese, 1919) and then of Staritsa (Tver diocese).

During the 1920s he was repeatedly arrested for his uncompromising resistance to the Renovationist schism. In January 1926 he was appointed ruling archbishop of Voronezh, where his powerful preaching earned him the nickname "a second Chrysostom," and he restored numerous parishes to the Patriarchal Church.

Arrested again in November 1926, he was sentenced in 1927 to ten years in the Solovki labor camp, where he unofficially ministered to fellow prisoners. He died of typhus on January 25 (February 7), 1929, on Sekirnaya Hill, Anzer Island, and was buried there. Glorified as a New Martyr by the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000. His relics, found in 1999, were transferred in 2009 to the Alekseevo-Akatov Convent in Voronezh.