Presbyter
Saint John was born on January 1, 1875, in the village of Pavlovsk, Tver Province, in the family of peasant Vasily Sofronov. He served as a clerk in the regimental office and graduated from the one-year courses at the Theological Seminary. After the revolution, he was ordained a priest. In 1931, he was arrested for failing to fulfill economic obligations and sentenced to one year in a corrective labor camp.
In the church of the village of Voloskova, Fr. John began to serve in 1936. On July 29, 1937, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Bezhetskaya prison. During interrogations, he refused to admit his guilt in counter-revolutionary activities. On September 20, the NKVD troika sentenced Fr. John to execution. He was shot on September 23, 1937.
He was canonized among the ranks of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Archpastoral Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for public veneration.
