Longinus Griftsov

Venerable Longinus Griftsov, in the world Leontius Pavlovich Griftsov, was a hieroschemamonk, born at Ryazan in 1798 and dead in 1882. He is venerated as a local saint in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, in the diocese of Donetsk, in the Synaxis of the saints of Sviatogorsk. His commemoration is on 11 September.

He was born in June 1798 at Ryazan, of a clerical family. He finished the Ryazan seminary in 1820. He made a successful civil career, was prosecutor in the city of Uralsk and held the rank of court councillor. Learning that his wife had been unfaithful, he left her and went to Kyiv, where the elder Parthenius advised him to enter the Sviatogorsk hermitage.

In 1854, arriving at the hermitage, he gave all his money to the monastery. Seeing his spiritual progress, Archimandrite Arsenius soon made him head of the newly built skete at the Holy Place. In 1870, after the death of his wife, he was formally enrolled among the novices and after a time tonsured into the mantle. In 1873 he was ordained hieromonk, and in 1882 he received the schema. He reposed after receiving communion and was buried behind the altar wall of the skete church.

On 8 May 2008 the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine decided on his local canonization in the diocese of Donetsk, in the Synaxis of the saints of Sviatogorsk. The service of glorification was held on 12 July 2008, during the visit to the Sviatogorsk Lavra of the primate of the Church, Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and all Ukraine, in the Dormition cathedral of the lavra.