Porphyry Rubanovich

Holy Hieromartyr Porphyry Rubanovich, also called Porphyry of Zaslavl, an archpriest, was a priest in Belarus, was sentenced to ten years in a camp in 1937 and was killed in 1943 by partisans. The page counts him among the twenty-⁠three priest martyrs of Minsk.

He was born in 1883 in the village of Lemeshevichi, Pinsk district, Minsk province, in a family of priests from father to son. He studied at the Pinsk Theological School, where for a time he taught singing, being gifted with a fine ear and a rare voice, and then at the Minsk Seminary. He was ordained priest in 1909 and served as rector of the Holy Trinity church in Dobroslavka, Pinsk district. From 1914 he served at Zaslavl, as rector of the church of the Transfiguration, near Minsk, until 1936; the local people remembered him as a good shepherd, kindly and attentive to the needs of his parishioners.

He was first arrested in 1928, for failing to pay the tax on the church (in the documents, failure to fulfil state obligations), and spent three and a half months in prison. In the early thirties a club was built next to his church in which, once a week, usually on Sunday, anti-⁠religious performances that offended believers were staged; Father Porphyry bore it in silence, together with the people. The churchwarden, Fedot Dorozhka, was arrested and sent to Siberia, from where he never returned. In 1935 the church of the Transfiguration was closed by force, against the will of the faithful. Father Porphyry did not renounce the priesthood or leave the clergy, but from 1935 served in a small cemetery church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God. In June 1936 he was forbidden to serve there too and ordered to leave Zaslavl; he was moved to Bykhov, further from the Polish border, being considered unreliable because he remained a priest. In Bykhov there was no open church, so he did not serve.

He was arrested for the second and last time on 5 August 1937, with the usual charge of anti-⁠Soviet propaganda; in reality he was deprived of freedom because he would not renounce his faith in God and the priesthood received from above. Without trial or investigation, by a sentence of 31 October 1937, he was condemned to ten years in a camp. He served his sentence near Gomel, working at a peat factory. In 1943 he was killed by partisans.

He is commemorated on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus and on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, in the new style.