Iosif Chekhranov

Priest Iosif Dimitrievich Chekhranov (1874-1937) was a priest at Verkhnodniprovsk in the Yekaterinoslav region and was shot in 1937 together with the priests Vasily Vakhnin and Feodor Romanovsky. He was glorified locally as a hieromartyr in the Kamianske diocese (Ukrainian Orthodox Church) by decision of the Synod of 18 March 2020.

He was born in 1874 in the village of Peshkovo, Rostov district, Yekaterinoslav province, in the family of the priest Dimitry Chekhranov, a brother of Archpriest Pavel, of Priest Ioann and of Mikhail Chekhranov. He studied at the Yekaterinoslav seminary (1890-1894) and at the Don seminary at Novocherkassk (1894-1898). From 1898 he was supervisor and then teacher of calligraphy at the theological school in Yekaterinoslav. He was ordained deacon on 8 July 1901 and priest on 15 July 1901 by Archbishop Simeon Pokrovsky, and served at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Novo-⁠Ekonomicheskoye, Bakhmut district. In 1907 he was transferred to the church of Saint Vladimir in Sofiivka, Aleksandrovsk district, and then to the Dormition Cathedral in Verkhnodniprovsk, where he was also priest at the former girls' gymnasium, teacher of religion and secretary of the school board.

After the closing of the church, in the early 1930s, he held gatherings in his dwelling in the neighbouring settlement named after Lenin. On 25 September 1937 he was arrested for anti-⁠Soviet agitation, because "at home he had baptised children, married and blessed" and had organised molebens and services on religious feasts, drawing collective farmers away from work during the harvest campaign. On 16 November 1937 the troika sentenced him to death, and on 19 November he was shot near Dnepropetrovsk, together with Vasily Vakhnin and Feodor Romanovsky, and buried in an unknown common grave.

On 27 February 2018 the synodal canonization commission examined the cases of the three priests, and on 18 March 2020 the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church numbered them among the locally venerated saints of the Kamianske diocese, approving the troparion, kontakion, prayer and icon.