John Vechorko

Holy Hieromartyr John Vechorko, a priest, was born in 1890 in the village of Kosarichi in the Bobruisk district of the Minsk province, in the family of the psalmist Martin Vechorko. In 1913 Ivan Martinovich finished the Minsk Theological Seminary, and in 1915 he was ordained priest for the church of the Protection in the village of Krivonosy, where he served all his life.

In 1920 a part of the Minsk province was occupied by Polish troops, and the officers took lodging in the priest's house, but did not regard him with friendship because he defended his peasant parishioners. In the end the Poles arrested Father John and held him for a time in the prison at Slutsk. In 1928 he was arrested a second time, by the Soviet authorities, on the charge of not paying taxes on time, and was sentenced to nine months in prison. After returning he continued to serve in the church of the Protection.

The authorities, wishing to close the church, demanded ever larger taxes of the priest. His means ran out and he went from house to house to the peasants to ask for help; some gave, from others he took loans. Seeing that the priest continued to defend the church, the OGPU workers decided to arrest him and the members of the church council. On 18 March 1933 they were arrested on the charge that, under the lead of the priest Vechorko, using as pretext the collection of money for taxes, they carried on active, organized anti-⁠Soviet activity, with the aim of frustrating the measures of Soviet power, above all the spring campaign, of breaking up the collective farms and of spreading all kinds of counterrevolutionary rumours. Questioned by the investigator, he answered: "I do not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation aimed at frustrating the economic and political campaigns, nor of any counterrevolutionary work in general. I consider that the accusation has as its aim the closing of the church. In my activity I did not go beyond the limits of religious rites and I consider myself an apolitical man."

After the end of the investigation Father John was sent to the prison at Slutsk. On 17 April 1933 the OGPU troika sentenced him to death. The priest John Vechorko was shot and buried in an unknown grave. The Church commemorates him on 17 April, the day of his death, in the new style, on 11 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus, and on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs.