Matthew Kritsuk

Holy Hieromartyr Matthew Kritsuk, an archpriest († 1950), was born in 1892 in the village of Maly Karatsk in the Slutsk district, Minsk province, in a poor peasant family. From childhood he worked as a farmhand and at a brick factory. The boy had a strong desire to learn: after elementary school and a long self-⁠preparation, in 1914 he passed the examination for the rank of people's teacher. After finishing the Theological Seminary at Vilnius, he was ordained a priest in 1924. He served in several parishes: Yastreb, Krivishino, Milovidy. In December 1932 he was appointed rector of the church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the village of Bolshaya Lysitsa, near Nesvizh, where he served eighteen years.

At that time Western Belarus belonged to the Polish state, and Orthodox were persecuted. Because he would not switch to the new Gregorian calendar, because he resisted the imposing of the Polish language in preaching and in services, and because he had solemnly celebrated the 950th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus, the priest was kept under police watch. During the war he went on caring for his parishioners and escaped only by a miracle the reprisal of the partisans of the Polish Home Army. In July 1950 he was arrested on an absurd charge of collaboration with the German occupiers. In October he was sentenced to twenty-⁠five years of camp, where he died the same year of heart failure.

He is commemorated on the movable day around 7 February, in the new style, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on the movable day around 11 July in the Synaxis of the Belarusian Saints. The Azbyka page commemorates him in the synaxis of the twenty-⁠three hieromartyrs of Minsk.