Dionysius Chagovets

Saint Dionysius Chagovets, hieromartyr (Dionysius of Sloboda, in the world Denis Andreevich Chagovets), was a priest of the Russian Church and is venerated as a local saint of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. He was shot on 28 November 1937 at Kharkiv. 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 1886 in the settlement of Dergachi, near Kharkiv, in the family of the priest Andrei Lvovich Shakhovtsov, the future archbishop Arsenius. At the time of his arrest, on 16 October 1937, Father Dionysius was priest of the village of Andreevka (now an urban-⁠type settlement) near Balakleya in the Kharkiv region. The investigation file mentions the pastor's family: his wife Antonina (? to 1978) and son Nicholas. Accused of subversive activity against Soviet power, he was sentenced on 14 November to death by shooting. The sentence was carried out on 28 November at Kharkiv. On 16 January 1989 he was rehabilitated. His wife, Antonina Chagovets, is buried in the city cemetery.

The son, Nicholas Denisovich Chagovets, became a chemistry teacher. Later he married Katerina Turchenko, a teacher of Russian language and literature, who had a son from a previous marriage, Alexander Turchenko. In the marriage two sons were born (in 1955), Vyacheslav and Boris Chagovets. The present descendants of Dionysius live in Kryvyi Rih.

On 22 June 1993, by decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, his local canonization was decided in the diocese of Kharkiv. 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.