Michael Chekhranov

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Chekhranov, a priest, was born in 1856 in Taurida province, to a deacon's family. In 1872 he graduated from the clerical school at Simferopol, and in 1880 from the Taurida seminary. From 1880 he served as reader at the Holy Trinity cathedral in Kerch. He married Irina Georgievna, and they had the children Daniel (1897), Victor (1898), Nila and Nadezhda (1901).

On 16 September 1881 he was ordained a priest for the Protection church in the village of Vodyanoe, Melitopol district (now the Kamianka-⁠Dniprovska district of Zaporizhzhia region). He was assistant to the rector, teacher of religion at the zemstvo school and the parish school, which he also headed. In 1901 he was appointed rector of the parish and assistant dean of the Malo-⁠Znamensky district, and later he was raised to archpriest.

After the revolution of 1917 they tried to forbid him to serve, and his family received threats, but he did not leave the place of his ministry. On 6 January 1918, on the day of Theophany (old style), three residents of Vodyanoe came for Father Michael with a cart. Matushka Irina, not getting a clear answer to her question where they were taking him, went with her husband. The hands of both were tied and they were set on the cart. The church warden, Babich, and Mark Shcherbina, a veteran of the Russo-⁠Japanese war, who had tried to defend the aged priest and his wife, were beaten to death.

On the river Konka a large hole had already been cut in the ice. Before the killing one of the murderers joked, "Until now, Father, you plunged the cross into this water; now plunge yourself." Father Michael asked for a little time to pray. The two of them, he and the matushka, knelt on the edge of the ice, said the prayer and waited. Father Michael said, "God be your judge," after which the atheist Bolsheviks drowned the martyrs in the hole.

In the spring of that year the bodies of the martyrs were found on the bank. The people were forbidden to approach the departed, let alone bury them. Time passed, the naked bodies began to decay, and the blasphemous prohibition was not lifted. Then the residents of Vodyanoe buried them secretly.

In 2001 the saints were canonized under the names Michael and Sophia Shafanov. After the information about the martyrs was clarified, on 26 June 2016, on the Sunday of All Saints, the day of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Zaporizhzhia, they were glorified in the diocese of Zaporizhzhia as the hieromartyr Michael Chekhranov and the martyr Irina Chekhranova. They are commemorated with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Crimean Metropolis on 2 December and with the Synaxis of the Saints of the Crimea on 28 December.