Ioann Mogilevsky

Priest John Grigorievich Mogilevsky (1873-1918) was a priest in the Yekaterinoslav region and was killed in 1918 by a gang. He was glorified locally as a hieromartyr in the Kamianske diocese (Ukrainian Orthodox Church) by decision of the Synod of 3 April 2019; the service of glorification has not yet been held, and the day of his commemoration is not known.

He was born in 1873 in the village of Mohyliv, Novomoskovsk district, Yekaterinoslav province, in the family of Grigory Mogilevsky, a supernumerary cantor at the church of the Resurrection and later psalm-⁠reader at the church of Saint John the Baptist in Petrykivka. He was the brother of the priest Mikhail and a second cousin of Saint Nicholas Mogilevsky, hierarch and confessor, Metropolitan of Alma-⁠Ata. He finished the parish school, learned to sing in the choir and to serve in church, helping his father, and was gifted with a good ear and voice. He graduated from the Yekaterinoslav seminary, was psalm-⁠reader and teacher of religion at the school in Nikolaevskie Khutora, then supervisor at the diocesan school for cantors, where he showed himself a zealous teacher, demanding of himself and of others, honest and humane.

In 1891 he married Pelagia Grigorievna; they had five sons and three daughters. He was psalm-⁠reader at Polog and at Podkryazhnoye, was ordained deacon on 26 October 1897 by Bishop Simeon of Yekaterinoslav, served afterwards at Yakovlevsky and at Pavlohrad, and from 1911 again in his native village of Mohyliv. On 11 December 1916 Bishop Agapit ordained him priest and appointed him rector of the church of the Resurrection in Voskresenovka. Far from politics, he received the news of the revolution of 1917 quietly, following the word of Scripture: there is no authority except from God.

In 1918 persecution began; armed detachments roamed the villages with searches and violence, and in the region the gang of "Marusya" raged. The father was threatened to give up serving, but he carried on his pastoral duty; the last entries in the parish register are written in his own hand in August 1918. He was returning on foot with parishioners after the Liturgy from a neighbouring village, whose priest had been killed more than half a year earlier and whom he was also tending. Near a well close to the village, the gang fell on them, tried to make him renounce the Church, then beat him, tore off the fingers of his hands and, exhausted, shot him.

On 4 September 2026 a memorial service was served for him in the village of Mohyliv, in the church of the Resurrection. The Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church placed him among the locally venerated saints of the Kamianske diocese on 3 April 2019, approving his icon and service texts.