Alexander Alexandrovich Hotovitzky was a Russian priest who spent the prime of his ministry as a missionary in North America before returning to Russia, where he died a martyr during the Soviet persecution of the Church. Born on February 11, 1872, in Kremenets in Volhynia, he was the son of an archpriest who served as rector of the Volhynia Theological Seminary. After studies at the Volhynia Seminary, he graduated from the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy in 1895, married Maria Scherbuhina, and was sent to the Diocese of the Aleutians and North America.
Beginning as a reader at the newly established Saint Nicholas Church in New York City, he was ordained to the priesthood on February 25, 1896, by Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov) at the diocesan cathedral in San Francisco. For some eighteen years he served Saint Nicholas as its pastor, becoming one of the central organizers of Orthodox life in the United States. He was instrumental in establishing new parishes in cities such as Philadelphia, Yonkers, and Passaic, edited the diocesan journal the American Orthodox Messenger, and oversaw the construction of the new Saint Nicholas Cathedral in New York, completed early in the 1900s. Much of this work was carried out under Bishop Tikhon (Bellavin), the future Patriarch of Moscow, with whom Hotovitzky's life would remain intertwined.
Recalled to Russia in 1914, Hotovitzky served first as rector of the Orthodox congregation in Helsinki, Finland, and from 1917 at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, where he again worked alongside the now-Patriarch Tikhon and took part in the All-Russian Church Council of 1917-18. Under the Bolshevik regime he was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and exiled for his defense of the Church and its property. Following a final arrest during the Great Purge, he was put to death in 1937. He was glorified as a New Hieromartyr, first by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1981 and later by the Moscow Patriarchate, and is commemorated on December 4.
