Phlegon Pongilsky

Holy Hieromartyr Phlegon (Phlegon Nikolaevich Pongilsky) was an archpriest in Yaroslavl, born on 28 March 1871 in the village of Kariaevo, in the Uglich district, Yaroslavl province, and died, perhaps shot, on 23 April 1938. He is commemorated on 10 April by the old calendar (23 April by the new) and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Our sources do not give the year or act by which he was numbered among the saints.

He was born into a priest's family. After the Yaroslavl seminary he was a teacher at the parish school in the village of Smolenskoe. In 1895 he was ordained priest for the church in the village of Vasilievskoe, in the Uglich district, and two years later was moved to the church of Zheleznyi Borok, near Yaroslavl. In 1905 he was moved to the church of Saint Nicholas in Yaroslavl and taught religion in several schools of the city. In the First World War he was priest with the 663rd infantry regiment and carried out pastoral care in military hospitals. In 1915 Archbishop Agathangel (Preobrazhensky) of Yaroslavl, at the request of the parishioners, appointed him to the church of Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica in Yaroslavl. In the same year he received the golden pectoral cross and, some years later, was raised to the rank of archpriest and appointed one of the deans of the city.

He was arrested on 7 July 1929 for anti-⁠Soviet agitation and in 1930 was sentenced to three years of exile in the Northern Region. After serving the exile, in 1932, he arrived the next year in the settlement of Petushki, in the Moscow region, where he lived until 1937. He worked as a weigher at the Khrapunovo station, performed services and directed the church choir. He was arrested again on 4 December 1937, when he was working as a watchman at the fuel depot of the Orekhovo station. He was sentenced by the NKVD troika of the Moscow region for counter-⁠revolutionary agitation to ten years in a labour camp. He did not admit guilt. He died (perhaps was shot) on 23 April 1938.

He was rehabilitated on 22 June 1993 by the prosecutor's office of the Ivanovo region, for the case of 1930, and on 19 April 1989 by the deputy prosecutor of the Vladimir region, for the case of 1937. His father, Nikolai Alexeevich Pongilsky (1832 to 1891), was a deacon, then a priest at Kariaevo. His brothers, Alexander and Nikolai, were also priests. He married on 17 July 1895 Ekaterina Alexandrovna, daughter of the priest Alexander Benediktov, and they had two sons, Alexei and Sergei.