Barsanuphius Mamchin

Venerable Martyr Barsanuphius Mamchin (Barsanuphius of Sloboda), archimandrite, was shot at Kharkiv on 19 January 1938 and is venerated as a local saint of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He was canonized in 1993, as a local saint of the diocese of Kharkiv, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Sloboda region.

He was born in 1875, in Saint Petersburg, in the family of a colonel, with the name Valentine Mikhailovich Mamchich (or Mamchin). In 1897 he finished the Imperial School of Jurisprudence. In 1909 he was ordained hieromonk by Archbishop Tikhon of Yaroslavl (Bellavin). Before the revolution he was a cleric of the Tolga monastery near Yaroslavl. Then he struggled in the Protection monastery in Kharkiv and sometimes served in the parish churches of the city.

On the proposal of Archbishop Ioannicius of 15/28 January 1924, Patriarch Tikhon and the Temporary Holy Synod attached to him decided on 1 February 1924: to open in the town of Lebedyan, in the diocese of Kharkiv, a see of a vicar bishop and to appoint to it the hieromonk Barsanuphius (Mamchin). At the moment of his arrest, on 28 December 1937, he held the rank of archimandrite. Accused of subversive activity against Soviet power, he was sentenced on 30 December to death by shooting. The sentence was carried out on 19 January 1938 at Kharkiv.

On 22 June 1993, by decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, his local canonization in the diocese of Kharkiv was decided. The glorification service took place during the visit to Kharkiv, on 3 and 4 July 1993, of Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine, in the Annunciation cathedral of the city. He is venerated only locally.