Presbyter
Saint Paul was born in 1866 in the village of Makovnitsy, Tver Province, into the family of a priest. After graduating from the seminary and Warsaw University, he began to teach the Law of God. In 1903, he was ordained a priest and served in the Ascension Church of the village of Kotovo. With the onset of persecution against the Church in 1929, Fr. Paul preached about the insidious spread of sin and condemned abortions, which caused confusion among some parishioners. He was linked to the distribution of religious literature among children, which led to his arrest in 1929. After being exiled to the Northern region, he returned to the village of Kotovo in 1931 and resumed his service. In 1937, he was arrested and sentenced for anti-Soviet agitation, and was shot on October 7, 1937. He was canonized among the ranks of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in 2000.
