Presbyter
Saint John was born on March 20, 1873, in the village of Vysokoye, Ryazan Province, into the family of a psalmist. He graduated from the Ryazan Theological Seminary and was ordained a priest in 1904 at the Zaraysk Nikolsky Cathedral. In Zaraysk, he served in the Nikolsky Cathedral, where the famous miracle-working icon of Nicholas of Zaraysk was kept. In 1922, valuable items were confiscated from the churches, some of which he managed to save. In 1928, the Nikolsky Cathedral was closed, and Father John began to advocate for its reopening, for which he was arrested in 1930 and sentenced to exile in the Northern Territory. After returning from exile, he was appointed the rector of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Church. In 1937, under the conditions of increasing persecution of the Church, he was arrested again and accused of counter-revolutionary agitation. On September 8, 1937, the NKVD troika sentenced him to execution, and he was shot on September 9, buried in an unmarked grave at the Butovo shooting range.
