Jacob of Nova Praha

Holy Hieromartyr Jacob of Nova Praha (in the world Yakov Nikolaevich Illichevsky) was a priest in the diocese of Odesa and was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1919. He was born in 1873, in the Kherson province. He is a locally venerated saint of the Oleksandriya diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, canonized in 2020 and glorified in 2021. Our calendar gives him three days, 29 May, 21 June and 4 September; our source ties the first two to the finding of his relics and his glorification.

Childhood and service

He was born in 1873 to the deacon Nikolai Illichevsky and his wife Alexandra, in the Kherson province. When he was seven his father died, and his mother was left with two children. She wished to bring up Yakov and his elder brother in the ways of the Orthodox Church. Yakov learned to read Church Slavonic and received a basic church education. In 1890 he finished the theological school at Kherson, in the second category, and in 1891 he entered the theological seminary at Odesa. Because of the family's material hardships, since his mother was left alone and without support, and his elder brother already had a family and was a deacon at Nikolaev, he asked to be released from the seminary in the second class, in 1893.

In July 1893 he was appointed psalm-⁠reader at the Dormition church in the village of Verblyuzhka, in the Oleksandriya district, where he also served as teacher in the parish school. In 1896 he was noted as one of the most zealous and skilled teachers. He was then moved, again as psalm-⁠reader, to Kalynivka, in the same district, with his wife, Claudia. On 14 (27) July 1896 their first child, Vladimir, was born and died after three days. In 1896 he was ordained deacon. The family had three more children: Valentina (1898), Antonina (1900) and Georgy (1902). The daughters finished the diocesan girls' school in Odesa and were able to work as home teachers. The son Georgy finished the theological school at Yelisavetgrad and later emigrated to Paris, where he studied mathematics at the Sorbonne.

On 16 October 1900 Archbishop Justin of Kherson and Odesa moved him to the Dormition church in the city of Odesa, where he served until 1905. On 26 April 1905 he was appointed to a priest's place at the Church of the Intercession in the village of Bulychevo (Petrovka), and on 30 April Bishop Theodosius ordained him priest, at the Liturgy, in Odesa. The parish included the surrounding villages. On 1 November 1907 Archbishop Demetrius moved him to the Church of the Intercession in the village of Shchaslyve (Ovnyanka), in the Oleksandriya district.

In the First World War he organised help for wounded and sick soldiers, and the Kherson diocesan gazette recorded his gifts and those of his parish for the societies of mercy. On 22 April 1915 Archbishop Nazarius of Kherson and Odesa rewarded him with the epigonation.

Nova Praha and martyrdom

On 26 January 1918 he was moved to the church of Saint Theodore the Recruit in the settlement of Nova Praha, in the Oleksandriya district. The church had been built at the expense of F. M. Radchenko and was finished only in 1918, so the priest had to arrange parish life anew, in the hard circumstances of the coming of Soviet power and civil war.

On 9 October 1919 the newspaper Odesskiy Listok published a list of the priests of the Kherson diocese killed as martyrs, which included the rector of the church of Saint Theodore the Recruit in Nova Praha, Father Yakov Illichevsky, killed by the Bolsheviks. He was buried beside the church. Later the church and the grave were destroyed.

Canonization and veneration

On 29 May 2020, with the blessing of Metropolitan Bogolep of Oleksandriya and Svitlovodsk, the venerable remains of Father Yakov were found and solemnly moved to the cathedral in Oleksandriya. On 9 December 2020 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church numbered him among the locally venerated saints of the Oleksandriya diocese, as a hieromartyr. On 21 June 2021, on the day of the Holy Spirit, his glorification took place, led by the primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and all Ukraine.