Holy New Martyr John Kochurov was born on this day in 1871. The future Fr. John was born on June 13, 1871, in the village of Bigildino-Surki, Ryazan province, into the family of the village priest Alexander Vasilyevich Kochurov and his wife Anna. The father combined his parish ministry with the duties as the teacher of the law of God in the public school village. John received his initial theological education at Dankovsky Elementary School. Then he studied at the Ryazan Theological Seminary (graduating in 1891) and the St. Petersburg Theological Academy (graduating in 1895). After graduating from the academy, he was sent to missionary service in the diocese of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. At first, he lived in New York. On August 27, 1895, Bishop Nicholas of the Aleutians ordained him a priest. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian Church existed only in Alaska and California. With the mass conversion of Greek Catholics beginning in 1890, the Russian Church began its development in the continental US. The beginning of Fr. John's parish ministry was associated with the opening of an Orthodox parish in Chicago by Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov, 1851–1915). In the first three years of his ministry, Fr. John added 86 former Greek-Catholic and 5 Latin Catholics to this small parish, and the number of permanent parishioners increased to 215 people. Fr. John organized brotherhoods in Chicago and the nearby city of Streator, part of the Orthodox Mutual Aid Society. Already in the first years of his pastoral ministry, Fr. John's works were marked by priestly awards: in May 1896, he made a donation of $600 for the iconostasis of St. Vladimir’s church in Chicago, together with his friend, the rector of the New York church, and also the martyr Alexander Khotovitsky. On November 30, 1898, Saint Bishop Tikhon (Belavin) ascended to the Aleutian See. Under his leadership, a new stage began in missionary activity in the diocese. In 1902, Fr. John was entrusted with constructing a new church in honor of the Most Holy Trinity in Chicago, which was completed in 1903. He collected money to construct the temple in Russia during his vacation there in 1900. In May 1906, Father John was appointed dean of the New York District of the Eastern States. In February 1907, he was one of the most active participants in the first council (sobor) of the North American Orthodox Church in Mayfield, PA. In March 1907, Bishop Tikhon returned to Russia. On May 20, 1907, Fr. John received permission to relocate back to Russia. In 1907, based on the Decree of the St. Petersburg Theological Consistory, Archpriest John Kochurov was sent as a teacher of the law of God to the Narva men's and women's gymnasium. In Narva, in today’s Estonia, he was assigned to the Transfiguration Cathedral and served there for nine years. In November 1916, he was appointed to fill the second vacancy in St. Catherine Cathedral of Tsarskoye Selo. On October 25, the Bolsheviks took power in Petrograd. On the morning of October 30, 1917, the Bolsheviks, who were on the outskirts of the city, fired at it. A prayer service was served in the cathedral for the cessation of internecine warfare, after which the rector of the church, Archpriest Nicholas Smirnov, together with two other cathedral priests, Fr. John and Fr. Stefan Fokko, decided to hold a religious procession in the city with another prayer service for the cessation of internecine warfare. Even though the town was shelled then, the religious procession was quite crowded. At this time, the city was abandoned by Cossack units. On October 31, the Bolsheviks entered Tsarskoe Selo and immediately began a search of apartments and arrests. The maddened soldiers seized the priests because, while organizing a religious procession, the cathedral priests allegedly prayed for the victory of the Cossacks. Fr. John protested and tried to explain the matter but received several blows to the face. Then, with whoops and hoots, the angry crowd of soldiers led him to the Tsarskoye Selo airfield and there they shot him in front of his son, a high school student, who was helplessly running after his father. The shepherd's body was taken in the evening to the chapel of the Palace Hospital, from where it was transferred to the Catherine Cathedral, where on Saturday, November 4, 1917, it was buried and taken to the tomb because the townspeople petitioned for the burial of the deceased here, under the cathedral. On November 8, a memorial service was celebrated for the murdered Fr. John in the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The Diocesan Council of the Petrograd Diocese accepted an appeal in which it called for assistance to the family of Fr. John. Exactly five months after the death of Fr. John, on March 31, 1918, when the number of murdered clergy known to the Synod reached 15 people, the Russian Church celebrated the first “funeral liturgy for new holy martyrs and martyrs" in its history. The service took place in the church of the Moscow Theological Seminary by Patriarch Tikhon, co-served by 4 bishops and 10 archimandrites. The murdered holy martyr Metropolitan Vladimir, along with the first murdered archpriest John Kochurov, was commemorated. In November of 1981, the Russian Church Abroad canonized Fr. John Kochurov, and in 1994, the Russian Orthodox Church did the same. In 2006, during excavations of the foundation of the cathedral of the Holy Great Martyr Catherine, blown up by the Bolsheviks, the relics of the Hieromartyr John Kochurov were discovered. Anthropological research occurred at the Institute of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences with forensic experts from the Central Internal Affairs Directorate for St. Petersburg and the region. Now, the relics are on the altar of the St. Sophia Cathedral. |
