Venerable Martyr Nikanor (Morozkin)

Venerable Martyr Nikanor (Nikifor Mikhailovich Morozkin) was born on 13 March 1870 into a peasant family in Ryazan province. He sang in church choirs and served as a reader in Orenburg before entering the St Nicholas monastery at Pererva near Moscow in 1899. Tonsured with the name Nikanor in 1903, he was ordained hierodeacon in 1904 and hieromonk in 1909, became the brotherhood's confessor in 1917 and in 1920 was put in charge of the Iveron chapel in Moscow. After the chapel was robbed in 1921 he spent eleven months under investigation but was acquitted. He then became abbot of the Pererva monastery and in 1923 was raised to the rank of archimandrite.

Arrested on 2 February 1932, he refused to plead guilty to anti-Soviet agitation and was exiled to Kazakhstan for five years. Released as an invalid in 1934 but barred from Moscow, he served in the village of Spas-Ostashevo. Arrested again on 26 March 1938, he rejected all the charges at interrogations and confrontations with false witnesses. An NKVD troika sentenced him to death on 14 June 1938; he was shot on 1 July 1938 and buried in a common grave at Butovo. He is commemorated on 18 June (1 July) and in the Synaxes of the Butovo New Martyrs, of the Moscow Saints and of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.