Presbyter
Saint John was born on April 12, 1887, in Moscow to the family of priest Vladimir Alexeyevich Kossinsky. After graduating from the Perervinsky Spiritual School, he worked as a teacher in a parish school starting in 1909. In 1914, he was ordained as a deacon, and in 1920 — as a priest, serving in the Trinity Church in the village of Zavorovo.
In 1927, he was arrested for 'embezzlement of someone else's property' and sentenced to one month in a corrective labor camp. In 1930, he was arrested again for anti-collective farm agitation, but after two and a half months, he was released.
In December 1937, having received a warning about arrest, he refused to leave, saying that it was not fitting for him to hide. On January 26, 1938, he was arrested and imprisoned in Taganka prison. During interrogations, he denied all accusations of anti-Soviet agitation.
On February 11, the NKVD troika sentenced him to execution. Priest John Kossinsky was shot on February 26, 1938, at the Butovo firing range and buried in an unknown common grave.
