Barlaam Pokhilyuk

Holy Venerable Martyr Barlaam Pokhilyuk, a hieromonk, whose name in the world was Victor Semyonovich Pokhilyuk, was born in 1870 in the village of Parpurovtsy in the Vinnitsa district of Podolia province, in a peasant family. He finished the parish school. In November 1900 he was received among the novices of the bishop's house in Chisinau, and on 19 November of that year he was tonsured a monk by Bishop Jacob (Pyatnitsky) of Chisinau and Khotin, with the name Barlaam, after the Martyr Barlaam of Antioch. On 16 August 1904 he was ordained hierodeacon and was then transferred to the bishop's house in Yaroslavl. From 1907 he was in the brotherhood of the bishop's house at Simbirsk and served as treasurer, and on 18 May 1907 he was ordained hieromonk. In 1910 he joined the brotherhood of the bishop's house in Kazan, and in 1911 he was appointed steward.

In 1912, at his own request, he entered the brotherhood of the Raifa Monastery of the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God, and served in the church in the village of Vasilyevo, then from January to October 1917 in the village of Pomary, after which he returned to the monastery. In 1922 he signed, with twenty-⁠five other monks and eighteen novices, the resolution of the brotherhood not to recognize the renovationists. After the closing of the Raifa Monastery he was arrested in 1928 and released after four days, and by decision of a peasant assembly he joined the clergy of the parish church in the abolished monastery. In January 1930 the political police planned the arrest of monks who lived near the closed monastery and influenced the mood of the peasants, who were protesting the closing of the monastery and collectivization. The monks, among them Barlaam, were arrested after the service on 27 January 1930, the patronal feast day of the Venerable Fathers slain on Sinai and at Raifa, and taken to the OGPU prison in Kazan. They were accused of the "savage killing of Red Army soldiers in 1918" (in fact local peasants had dealt with soldiers who attacked the monastery, and the monks took no part), of "anti-⁠Soviet agitation against government measures in the reorganization of agriculture", and of holding the monastery's property "for gain". Barlaam did not admit guilt. He was shot together with four other hieromonks, a novice and two laymen, by the sentence of the troika of 20 February 1930.

He was numbered among the saints for local veneration on 6 April 1997 and for veneration throughout the Church by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in the year 2000. He is commemorated on 27 January, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 17 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan, all in the new style.