Basil Vitevsky

Saint Basil Vitevsky, hieromartyr, was a priest of the Russian Church, born in 1873 in the family of a village priest, and shot on 8 February 1938. He was canonized in the year 2000, among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia.

He was born in the family of the village priest John Vitevsky. After finishing the Samara seminary he served in various village parishes of the Samara diocese. From 1914 to 1920 he was priest at the church of the Epiphany in the settlement of Amanak, Buguruslan district. From 1921 he served at Pokrovsk, then at the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Samara.

He was arrested for the first time on 11 December 1928 and, on 29 December, under article 58 paragraph 10, was sentenced to three years of exile in the Saratov region. The second time he was arrested on 25 December 1930, at Pokrovsk. In August 1931, for belonging to a "counter-⁠revolutionary insurgent church organization, whose aim was the overthrow of the Soviet power", he was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp. From 1931 to 1933 he was at the White Sea Canal, was released early and until 1936 was in exile.

He was arrested the third time on 30 November 1937 at Kuibyshev. For participation in an "underground counter-⁠revolutionary church sectarian organization" he was sentenced to death and shot on 8 February 1938. He was buried in a common nameless grave.