Mitrofan Vilgelmsky

Holy Hieromartyr Mitrofan Vilgelmsky, a priest, was born on 4 June 1883 in the town of Novomirgorod, Kherson province. His father, Grigory Vilgelmsky, had a trade. Mitrofan finished the parish school and from 1911 served in a church as reader. In 1922 he was ordained a deacon and a year later a priest, and served in the churches of the Odessa diocese. In 1924 he was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison on a charge of baptizing a child without a certificate from the civil registry. From 1928 he served in the Poltava diocese. In February 1934 the authorities closed the church in which he served, and Father Mitrofan wrote to Archbishop Onuphrius (Gagalyuk), whom he knew well from the time he governed the vicariate of Odessa, and received from him a blessing to go to Bishop Anthony in the Belgorod diocese. Arriving at the bishop's, he was given a place and was soon appointed dean.

On 22 February 1935 NKVD men arrested him. At the interrogation the priest at first signed the testimony written by the investigator, but on 22 June he gave other testimony, which the investigator was forced to write down. He clarified that he had indeed received from Bishop Pankeev the instruction to make collections for the Patriarchate and the diocese, but it had not been said to him and he had not known that the money went to help the exiled clergy, this being only his own supposition. He also said that he had received from Pankeev the instruction to strengthen pastoral activity, but only in his own parish, in the town of Korocha, with nothing about drawing collective farmers away from work; the instruction was due to a complaint by the parishioners that he did not carry out religious activity enough and was a poor preacher. On 7 August he sent the procurator a new petition, in which he said that the March testimony had been distorted by the investigator and signed under pressure and threat.

On 11 September 1935 the sentence was read: Bishop Anthony and the dean Mitrofan Vilgelmsky received ten years of imprisonment. They were sent to the Far East, to the same camp as Archbishop Onuphrius (Gagalyuk) of Kursk. In March 1938 they were moved to the prison at Blagoveshchensk, and on 17 March 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced them to death. On 1 June 1938 Mitrofan Vilgelmsky was shot together with Archbishop Onuphrius, Bishop Anthony and the other clergy, and buried in an unknown common grave. He is commemorated on 1 June, the day of his death, in the new style, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day) and, on 1 August, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk.