New Martyrs of Mgar

The new venerable martyrs of Mgar are Abbot Ambrose and sixteen monks of the Transfiguration monastery at Mgar, by the river Sula in the Lubny district of the Poltava region, killed by the Bolsheviks during the civil war in August 1919. They were canonized by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate) on 30 August 2008, its Holy Synod having decided on 8 May 2008. The source does not say whether this is a canonization for that Church only.

The circumstances of their death

On 10 July 1919 (New Style) the Mgar monastery was occupied by soldiers of the Bolshevik Antonov regiment. The monks had to give up almost all the rooms and move into a shed. Toward the end of July the soldiers withdrew before the Volunteer Army, which entered the monastery on 14 August, but the next day the "Whites" had to withdraw. On 17 August the Red Army occupied the monastery a second time, and the next day twenty-⁠four monks and Abbot Ambrose were arrested, accused of helping the White guards.

They were all driven to Lubny. After two hours at the station, they were told that they were being sent under guard to work at Lazirok. In the village of Kruglik, seven kilometres from Lubny, a detachment of Red cavalry overtook them and ordered the guards to divide them into three groups. In the night of 19 August New Style (6 August Old Style), on the Pyriatyn road, at the order of the commissar Bakay, they were shot. Seventeen monks died, headed by Abbot Ambrose. Eight, wounded, survived: Hieromonk Hilarion, aged 67, Hieromonk Mitrophan, Hieromonk Theophilus (born Fyodor Mikhailov), aged 52, Hierodeacon Isaac (Ivan Patsenko), aged 61, Hierodeacon Niphon, aged 51, Hierodeacon Modestus (Matthew Dudka), aged 44, Hierodeacon Eusebius (Euthymius Yurchenko), aged 42, and the monk Christian (Miron Sidorenko), aged 49.

Canonization and commemoration

On 8 May 2008 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided on the canonization of Abbot Ambrose and the sixteen monks killed with him, carried out on 30 August in the Mgar monastery. Venerated are: Abbot Ambrose; the hieromonks Arcadius, Ioannicius, Jonah, Joseph, Nicanor, Athanasius, Theophan, Serapion and Nicostratus; the hierodeacon Julian; the monks Ioannicius, Herman, Nazarius, Parthenius, Patapius and Dorimedon. Their commemoration is on 6 August (24 July Old Style), a day that does not coincide with the day of the killing given above, and the source does not explain this difference.