Holy New Martyr Stefan Frantov was arrested on this day in 1938. Stepan [baptismal name: Stefan] Fedorovich Frantov was born in 1877 in the village of Nashchekino, Bronnitsy District, Moscow Province, into a peasant family. Stepan was educated at a village school, assisted his father for some time, then worked in a warehouse, and in 1920 returned to his native village. In the same year, an order was issued to turn in bicycles for the needs of the Red Army. Stepan Fedorovich refused to do so, for which he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Stepan Frantov was a parishioner of Holy Transfiguration Church in the village of Spas-Mikhnevo, sang in the choir, and then became the choir director and cantor. The authorities reacted to his active church life: he was disenfranchised and his farm was confiscated. However, this did not stop Stepan Fedorovich and he continued to work in the church. In 1937, the authorities resolved to set up a grain dryer in the church and began to tear down the church fence. Martyr Stefan came to the defense of the church and said, addressing the faithful: “Save us, the Communists are despoiling the last of our churches!”. Some believers assembled near the church and the work had to be halted. Witness statements began to be collected against Stepan Fedorovich. One of the witnesses relayed the words of the saint: “The Soviet regime and the communists have despoiled all the churches, in the surrounding villages the churches have almost all been occupied as collective farm barns, and some of them are broken, and this is because we do not go to church enough. We should not abandon our church, or the Communists will seize it to be used as a barn, whereas the church is a house of comfort and rest for us. Do not listen to the agitating against going to church on holidays. The Antichrist Communists can say whatever they say, but we should not forget our Orthodox faith.” On February 16, 1938, Martyr Stefan was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet agitation. Stepan Fedorovich did not plead guilty. On February 27, an NKVD troika in Moscow Region sentenced Martyr Stefan to execution for “active counter-revolutionary activity, spreading vile slander against the Soviet authorities and Communists” and “defamation of the Stalinist constitution.” On March 7, 1938, the martyr Stefan Frantov was executed by a firing squad at Butovo near Moscow. Source: Andrey A. Kostriukov, personal FaceBook page. | 
