Ioann Flerov was the builder and first rector of the Church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Semyany, Vorotynsky District, Nizhny Novgorod Region, a hieromartyr.
The church was built and consecrated in 1912. At the consecration, Father Ioann said: "My church will stand for a long time." The church did indeed survive both destruction and desecration, but its rector, Father Ioann Flerov, was accused in September 1918 of organizing an uprising in the village of Bykovka and was arrested.
Father Ioann was placed in the prison of the town of Vasilsursk, where he was frequently summoned for interrogation and pressed to renounce Christ and his priesthood. The priest refused. He was then taken out to the cemetery and ordered to dig his own grave. Having dug it, he began to pray. When he finished, he said: "I am ready." He was killed by a volley of shots to the back and fell face-down into the grave pit.
After his death, the church gained an intercessor before God. For a long time the godless authorities could not close it, and when they did close it, they were unable to destroy it, though they wanted to, because the church stood as a reproachful monument to the people's labor - the builders themselves and the peasant donors were still alive.
But the parishioners would not give up the keys. A believing friend would come to Tatyana, the keeper of the keys, and say:
- Tatyana, they will take us away anyway.
- Let them take us, then; we shall go not for anyone, but for God, - Tatyana would answer.
During one wave of persecution, the cunning chairman of the village council summoned Tatyana and said:
- Tatyana, you have the key, come now, the church needs to be opened.
- You are lying, you are not going to open the church now, I will not give you the key. Even if you imprison me and all my kin, I will not give you the key until you announce that there will be a service in the church.
The chairman backed down, and the Church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Semyany stood undestroyed until it reopened in the nineteen-forties.
The Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (13 - 16 August 2000) resolved to glorify the priest Ioann Flerov for church-wide veneration in the rank of hieromartyr.
The feast day of Hieromartyr Ioann Flerov is celebrated annually on 4 October.