Ηegumen / Abbot
Saint John Romanovich Sarv, a holy martyr and priest, was born in 1867 in the Livonian province. He graduated from the Riga Theological Seminary and was ordained as a priest. He served in various churches, including the Transfiguration Church on the Zabalcan Avenue, where he became the rector in 1912. In the late 1920s, he was expelled from Leningrad and continued his ministry in Tikhvin. In 1934, he was arrested but was released after a conditional sentence. In 1937, he was arrested again along with 14 other priests and laypeople, accused of counter-revolutionary activities. All the priests, except for him, were executed, while he and five others refused to confess guilt, demonstrating Christian courage. Saint John Sarv and the mentioned martyrs, including the holy martyr Arsenius (Dmitriev), the holy martyr Ioannikiya (Kozhevnikova), the holy martyrs Vasily Kandelabrov, Nikolai Pokrovsky, Emilian Panasevich, and Nikolai Zelenov, were executed in Tikhvin on December 3, 1937.
