Presbyter
Saint John (in the world Ivan Vasilyevich Zabolotny) was born in 1899 in the village of Klinovoe, Podolsk province. In 1918, he was drafted into the Red Army but hid from service. At the end of 1919, he was arrested for desertion and imprisoned in a forced labor camp. After his release in 1922, he became a monk at the Uman Monastery, where he took monastic vows. In 1927, he was ordained as a priest and served in various churches in Ukraine, and from 1935, in the Zaraysk district of the Moscow region.
On November 16, 1937, he was arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activity. He was held in the Kolomna prison but did not confess to any wrongdoing. On November 27, 1937, he was sentenced to death and executed on December 3 at the Butovo firing range. He was buried in an unknown mass grave. The name of John was included in the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the decision of the Holy Synod on December 26, 2001.
