New Hieromartyr Romanus Marchenko

Romanus (Roman) Marchenko was an Orthodox priest who suffered during the Soviet persecution of the Church and is numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He served as rector of the Pokrov (Protection of the Theotokos) Church in the Cossack stanitsa of Nadezhdinskaya, in the Verny district of the Semirechye region, a place now within the town of Issyk. He is commemorated on September 3.

According to the record of his life, the closure of the Pokrov church in the autumn of 1929 became the occasion of his death. The Cossacks of the village actively resisted the authorities' move against the church; the authorities responded by bringing in mounted militia to suppress the resistance, several dozen parishioners were arrested, and the priest was killed amid these events. His martyrdom thus belongs to the wave of repression directed against rural parishes and their clergy during the early Soviet anti-religious campaigns.

Father Romanus was glorified among the saints at the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church held in the year 2000, which canonized a large assembly of those who suffered for the faith in the twentieth century. He is included in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.