Saint Yekaterina Arskaya

Ekaterina Andreyevna Arskaya (born April 1, 1875, in Saint Petersburg; died December 17, 1937, in Novgorod) was a Russian Orthodox saint and new martyr. She came from a merchant family. Her father, Andrey Urtyev, was a ktitor of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" in Saint Petersburg. She was educated at the Alexander Institute in Saint Petersburg. At the age of twenty-four, she married artillery officer Pyotr Arsky, with whom she had five children. Both her husband and all their children died during the epidemics of 1918–1920. In the early 1930s, Arskaya joined the Brotherhood of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Leningrad and became a spiritual daughter of its leader, Archimandrite Lev. In 1932, she was arrested along with 92 others accused of illegal religious activity within the brotherhood, as well as conducting counter-revolutionary propaganda and forming an anti-Soviet organization. During the investigation, she pleaded not guilty and refused to implicate anyone. Sentenced to three years in a labor camp, she served her term in Karlag (Karaganda). After her release, unable to return to Leningrad, she settled in Borovichi. In October 1937, she was arrested again and charged with belonging to a counter-revolutionary church organization allegedly led by Archbishop Gabriel of Polotsk. She did not admit guilt. On December 10 of that year, she was sentenced to death and executed seven days later. Other Russian new martyrs, Kira Obolenskaya and Archbishop Gabriel, were also sentenced to death in the same trial. She was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2003.