Presbyter
Hieromartyr Petr Ivanovich Sakharovsky was born in 1876 in Nizhny Novgorod into the family of a chancery employee. He completed a zemstvo school and three classes of the theological seminary, worked for ten years as a clerk in the office of the vicar bishop located at the Voznesensky Pechersky Monastery, and served as a psalm-reader at the Trinity Church on Sennaya Square. He married, and two daughters were born to the family.
In 1901 Petr Ivanovich was ordained deacon; from 1905 he also served as a singing teacher and instructor of the Law of God in the parish school, and taught at diocesan courses for teachers. In December 1918 Father Petr was ordained priest and assigned to the village of Davydkovo of the Gorbatov district; later he was elevated to archpriest. At the end of the 1920s he returned to Nizhny Novgorod, served in the Trinity Church of Verkhnij Posad, and after its closure served in the Spassky Church. He was repeatedly subjected to arrests and searches.
On the night of 5 August 1937 Father Petr was arrested, allegedly as a member of the Gorky branch of a “church-fascist sabotage and terrorist organization.” He was accused of conducting counterrevolutionary agitation, recruiting new members, and espionage, and was sentenced to be shot. Archpriest Petr Sakharovsky was executed on 4 October 1937 and buried in a common unmarked grave.
He was glorified among the holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in August 2000 at the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Commemoration days: 4 October (21 September O.S.), in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Nizhny Novgorod Metropolia and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.
