Formation and Ordination
John Kochurov was a priest's son from the Ryazan countryside, one of the many boys of the clerical estate who passed through the church school system of the late Russian Empire. From the Danky Theological School he went on to the Ryazan Theological Seminary, graduating in 1891, and then to the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, where the missionary vocation took hold of him.
On completing the Academy in 1895 he married Alexandra Chernyshova, herself of a clergy family, and on August 27, 1895, he was ordained to the priesthood at the Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra by Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov), the ruling bishop of the Aleutians and Alaska, who assigned the young priest to his own North American mission. The couple would raise a large family; the sources record at least six children.
Missionary Years in Chicago
Kochurov was installed as the priest of Saint Vladimir's church in Chicago, with an affiliated parish, the Church of the Three Hierarchs in Streator, Illinois, in the surrounding coal-mining region. His ministry centered on the émigré communities from Carpathian Ruthenia and Galicia, many of whom were former Eastern-rite Catholics (Uniates). According to the synaxarion, eighty-six Uniates and five Catholics were received into the Orthodox Church during his first three years of parish service, and the two parishes grew to some three hundred members with two functioning church schools.
His labors reached well beyond his own parishes. He is credited with helping to establish or support Orthodox communities in Madison, Streator, and Joliet in Illinois, in Buffalo, New York, and as far afield as Hartshorne, Oklahoma. He was elevated to the rank of archpriest on May 6, 1906, appointed dean of the New York area and the eastern states, and in February 1907 took part in the first All-American Council of the mission at Mayfield, Pennsylvania — the assembly, convened under Archbishop Tikhon, that set the pattern of conciliar church life in America. He worked throughout these years alongside the future Patriarch, then the ruling bishop of the American mission.
Holy Trinity Cathedral
Kochurov's great undertaking in Chicago was the construction of a worthy church for his immigrant flock. From January to May 1900 he traveled through Russia raising funds for the project, and the donors came to include Tsar Nicholas II himself. The commission went to Louis Sullivan, one of the fathers of modern American architecture, who designed the church in a style recalling the village churches of Russia.
The foundation was laid on March 31, 1902, and the completed church — Holy Trinity, built at a cost of about fifty thousand dollars — was consecrated in 1903 by Bishop Tikhon. For these labors Kochurov was awarded the Order of Saint Anna, Third Degree, on May 6, 1903. Holy Trinity remains a cathedral of the Orthodox Church in America and a Chicago architectural landmark.
Return to Russia
Released from his North American service on May 20, 1907, Kochurov returned to Russia that summer and was attached to the Holy Transfiguration Cathedral in Narva, in Estonia. For nearly a decade his chief work was that of a teacher — from August 1907 he taught the Law of God in the Narva gymnasiums, carrying a heavy weekly load in both the boys' and girls' schools. His service was recognized with the Order of Saint Anna, Second Degree, in 1912, and later the Order of Saint Vladimir, Fourth Degree.
In November 1916 he was transferred to Saint Catherine's Cathedral at Tsarskoye Selo, the town of the imperial residences outside Petrograd, where he quickly became known as an eloquent and well-prepared preacher. He had served there barely a year when the revolution reached the town.
Martyrdom at Tsarskoye Selo
At the end of October 1917 (Old Style), as Bolshevik forces fought their way into Tsarskoye Selo, the clergy of the town led a religious procession through its streets, praying for peace amid the fratricidal conflict. On October 31 — November 13 on the civil calendar — Father John was seized in his apartment by revolutionary soldiers, who accused the priests of having prayed for a victory by the Cossacks. He was beaten about the face, taken to the outskirts of the town, and shot by riflemen; the accounts relate that he was dragged by his hair and that his pectoral cross was taken from his body.
His killing was recognized as martyrdom almost at once. A hierarchal panikhida was served for him on November 8, 1917, with Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd acknowledging his death as a martyr's, and Patriarch Tikhon — his old bishop from the American mission — wrote a letter of consolation to his widow. He was buried in the crypt beneath Saint Catherine's Cathedral at Tsarskoye Selo. On March 31, 1918, at the first Memorial Liturgy for the new hieromartyrs and martyrs of the persecution, celebrated by Patriarch Tikhon, the "first-slain archpriest John Kochurov" stood at the head of the commemorated names.
Glorification
The Russian Orthodox Church glorified Archpriest John Kochurov among the New Martyrs and Confessors at the Bishops' Council held at Saint Daniel's Monastery in Moscow in December 1994. His feast is kept on October 31, the day of his martyrdom, and he is venerated on both sides of the ocean — in Russia as the protomartyr of the Soviet persecution, and in America as one of the missionary builders of the Orthodox Church there.
