Presbyter
Saint Dmitry Vasilievich Kasatkin was born on October 24, 1884, in the village of Boris-Gorodok, Mozhaysky district of Moscow province, in the family of a psalmist. He graduated from the Zvenigorod Spiritual School in 1900 and the Vifansk Spiritual Seminary in 1906. He served as a teacher in the parish school of the village of Milyatino, and in 1916 he was ordained as a priest at the church in honor of Saints Cosmas and Damian of the Gvozdnya pogost, where he served for 20 years.
In the 1930s, with the support of parishioners, he opposed the closure of the church, which caused dissatisfaction among the authorities. On November 26, 1937, he was arrested and placed in the prison of Kolomna, then transferred to Moscow to the Taganka prison. He was accused of preaching and agitating against collective farms. Father Dmitry rejected the accusations, stating that his actions were part of the duties of a priest. On December 5, he was sentenced to 10 years in forced labor camps and served his sentence in the Belomoro-Baltic ITL in Medvezhyegorsk.
He appealed for a review of the case, pointing out the injustice of the sentence, but the request for a re-examination was denied. In August 1940, he was transferred to the Talazhskoye section of the Kuloy ITL. The hard labor undermined his health. He passed away on October 28, 1942, in captivity and was buried in an unknown common grave. The name of Priest Dmitry Kasatkin was included in the Assembly of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the decision of the Holy Synod on December 26, 2006.
