Hryhoriy Seletsky

Hryhoriy Seletsky, known as John of Yelisavetgrad, was a priest, later an abbot and a spiritual writer; he is venerated among the venerable confessors. He was born on 25 January 1885 in the village of Mitrofanivka, Kherson province, to the priest Gabriel and his wife Olympiada, and his name in the world was Grigory Gavrilovich Seletsky. He attended the theological school at Yelisavetgrad and the Odessa seminary, studied history and philology at Moscow University and in 1911 finished the philosophy faculty of the University of Gottingen (Zurich in other sources), mastering several foreign languages. From 1914 he served as an officer in the First World War.

In 1921, at Yelisavetgrad, he was ordained deacon and then priest by Bishop Paul Koloskevich. From 1922 to 1926 he was rector of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God. In 1923, on behalf of the Yelisavetgrad clergy, he went to Moscow to Patriarch Tikhon, whose resolution against the Renovationists helped keep most of the parishes of the region in the canonical Church. He sharply criticised the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius of 1927 and came close to the church opposition of the "Danilovites".

He was arrested several times: at the end of 1922 he was exiled to Kharkov, and further arrests, camps and exile followed. In exile he received secret monastic tonsure with the name John from Schema-⁠Archbishop Anthony Abashidze. During the Second World War he lived at Poltava, where he was raised to the rank of abbot and served as spiritual father and helper to Abbess Innocentia at the Exaltation of the Cross convent. From 1944 he stayed several years at the Pochaiv Lavra and had to leave at the start of the 1960s, in the new wave of persecution.

He spent his last years in a modest house on the edge of Kremenets, in Ternopil region, under administrative supervision, almost in confinement. Despite the bans he served the Liturgy in secret at home and received spiritual children. He reposed on 24 August 1971 and was buried in the Kremenets cemetery. He left letters, sermons and theological reflections on eschatological themes; his icons show him with a scroll bearing a quotation about "a new heaven and a new earth".