St Alexander the new hiero-confessor

Alexander Derzhavin, born in 1864 near Klin, the son of a deacon, served from 1897 as priest of the Trinity church in the village of Troitskoye near Zvenigorod. Arrested on New Year's night 1930 and accused of anti-Soviet agitation, which he denied, he was sentenced to three years of exile in the Russian North. Broken in health, he died in exile on 25 March 1933 and was canonized as a confessor in 2002.