John Pankratovich

Holy Hieromartyr John Pankratovich, a priest, was born in 1870 in the town of Kletsk, Slutsk district, Minsk province, in the world Ivan Fyodorovich Pankratovich. The dates of his ordinations as deacon and priest are not known. In 1913 he became rector of the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the village of Chizhevichi (today a locality near the town of Soligorsk), and at Pascha in 1918 he received the skufia for zealous service. He was the last rector of the church at Chizhevichi until its closing by the Soviet authorities in 1934. The iconostasis of the nineteenth century was burned in the square before the church. The priest went on secretly performing rites: he blessed houses, baptized newborns, buried the dead and urged the parishioners to show their disagreement with the acts of the authorities without doubt and to sign for the resumption of services. In 1937, at the general census of the population, he told the parishioners not to hide their faith and to enter in the questionnaire their membership of the Orthodox Church.

On 23 August 1937 Protopresbyter John Pankratovich was arrested. He was accused of "going round the villages and calling the peasants to sign for the reopening of the previously closed church" and of "urging, at the time of the census, many parishioners to register as believers". At the interrogations it was proposed to him to renounce the priestly rank, but he refused categorically. He did not admit guilt of illegal acts. On 28 August 1937 the special troika attached to the NKVD of the Byelorussian SSR sentenced him to death. He was shot on 6 October 1937, at Slutsk, and buried in an unknown grave.

On 28 October 1999 the Holy Synod of the Belarusian Orthodox Church canonized him as a locally venerated saint, and in August 2000 the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church numbered him among the New Martyrs and Confessors, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 6 October, the day of his death, in the new style, on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs, and on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus.