John Prigorovsky

Holy Hieromartyr John Prigorovsky, a priest, was born on 4 January 1875 in the family of the sexton Yemelyan Prigorovsky of the Chernigov diocese. In 1897 he finished the Chernigov Seminary and was sent as psalmist to the church in the village of Mostovoe, in the Kuban region. On 28 February 1898 he was ordained deacon at the church of the Holy Prophet Elias in the stanitsa of Nezamaevskaya, Yeysk department, Kuban region, and on 19 May of the same year priest at the church of the hamlet of Kugoeysky in the same region and appointed head and catechist of the parish school. Between 1898 and 1903 he directed and taught at an evening school for adults, which he had opened.

On 6 June 1903 he was moved to the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Vinodelnoe, Stavropol province, and appointed catechist at two schools of the Ministry of Education and at the parish school. In 1905 the congress of the clergy of the 6th deanery of the Stavropol province elected him deputy to the diocesan and district congresses, and he held the post until 1908. In 1908 he served at the church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in the stanitsa of Shkurinskaya, being head and catechist of the parish school and catechist at two schools of the Ministry. On 17 August 1916 he returned to serve at the church of the Holy Prophet Elias in the stanitsa of Nezamaevskaya and on 30 September of the same year was appointed rector.

After the unbelievers came to power, civil war began, and the stanitsas of the Kuban region passed several times, now to the White army, now to the Red. At the end of Holy Week in 1918 the stanitsa of Nezamaevskaya was taken by the Bolsheviks. On Holy Saturday, 21 April (4 May), a band of Red soldiers burst into the church, during the service, and Father John was arrested and led out into the square before the church. The killers fell on the priest with curses. Father John was cruelly beaten, his face was disfigured and, covered with blood and barely alive, he was dragged beyond the edge of the settlement and brutally killed, and the inhabitants of the stanitsa were forbidden to bury him.

The Church commemorates him on 4 May, in the new style (21 April in the old style), the day of the killing, on 3 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kuban (a movable day), and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.