Mikhail Podielsky of Zazymia

Priest Mikhail Podielsky (1878-1937) was a parish priest in the village of Zazymia, in the Brovary district of the Kyiv region, and was shot in 1937. He was glorified locally as a hieromartyr in the Boryspil diocese (Ukrainian Orthodox Church) by decision of the Synod of 17 August 2021; he is commemorated on 14 (27) November, the day of his death.

He was born on 21 May 1878 at Nizhyn, in the Chernigov province, in a deacon's family. He served first as a deacon in the Chernigov diocese. In 1925 he was ordained priest and sent to the deanery of Pryluky. In 1930 he was detained for the first time by the NKVD at Pryluky. After release he had to move to Zazymia, in the Brovary district. Despite the pressure of the local Soviet authorities he continued his pastoral service there, refused to close the church, and performed for the local people the services and sacraments of the Church.

On 19 November 1937 a warrant for his arrest was issued on a charge of "anti-⁠Soviet agitation." At the inquiry, according to the records, he remained calm and rejected all accusations; according to researchers, despite interrogations and torture in the NKVD prison, he did not yield, did not renounce the faith and informed on no one. On 20 November the NKVD troika of the Kyiv region sentenced him to death, with confiscation of property. On 27 November 1937 at midnight the sentence was carried out, as the act of execution shows. The body, like those of most of the executed, was taken to the Bykivnia forest.

The Synod decided on 17 August 2021 on his glorification, on the basis of the report of Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovary. Among the initiators was the Centre for the Study of the Heritage of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Twentieth Century, whose researchers had long gathered data about him in the archives of Kyiv and Chernigov.