Saint John Kochurov, Hieromartyr, Missionary in America
Today we commemorate Saint John Kochurov, Hieromartyr, Missionary in America, First Russian Clergy Martyr in the twentieth century.
After his graduation from Saint Petersburg Theological Academy Fr. John was sent, in accordance with his long desire for missionary service, to the Diocese of the Aleutians and Alaska in 1895.
The Russian Orthodox missions in Northern California, on the Aleutian Islands, and in Alaska had at that time already existed for about a hundred years, and Church life was conducted on a foundation of rather numerous parish communities which possessed significant financial resources, having become accustomed over several generations to life in America. But Orthodox life in the rest of the country was only being initiated, and it required a great deal of evangelical activity by the clergy to create normal Orthodox parishes within the multinational and multiconfessional local population.
His Orthodox parish of Saint Vladimir’s Church in Chicago consisted of a small number of the original Russians, Galician and Hungarian Slavs, Arabs, Bulgarians, and Aravians. The majority of the parishioners were working people who earned their bread by toiling not far from where they live, on the outskirts of the city. Affiliated with this parish in Chicago was the Church of the Three Hierarchs in the city of Streator. This place, and the town of Kengley, are situated ninety-four miles from Chicago, and were famous for their coal mines. The Orthodox parish there consisted of the Slovaks who worked there who had been converted from the Unia.
In February 1907, he was one of the most energetic participants of the first North American Orthodox Council in Mayfield. Fr. John’s return to Russia in the summer of 1907 signified for him the beginning of his service in Russia. During the February Revolution, on the morning of October 30, 1917, the Bolshevik forces began to expose the inhabitants of Tsarskoye Selo to artillery fire, who still did not suspect that the country was involved in a civil war. A tumult erupted, with many people running to the Orthodox churches. When the Bolsheviks, together with the Red Guard, entered Tsarskoye Selo, they began to make the rounds of the apartments of the military officers, making arrests. Fr. John was conveyed to the outskirts of the town and there they assassinated him on October 31, 1917.
For Russian Church life, this first martyrdom of a Russian Orthodox pastor in the twentieth century was deeply significant. It aroused a profound spiritual response within the hearts of many laity, clergy, and hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. Exactly five months after Fr. Johns death, on March 31, 1918 — by which time the number of murdered clergymen known to the Holy Synod had already reached fifteen — the first Memorial Liturgy for the New Hieromartyrs and Martyrs in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century was served in the church of the Moscow.