Stephen Semenchenko

Holy Hieromartyr Stephen Semenchenko was a priest in the village of Mikhailovskoe, Kansk district, Yenisei province, and was killed by the Bolsheviks on 14 March 1919.

He served as priest at the church of the Protection in the village of Mikhailovskoe, today in the Krasnoyarsk region. The parish also embraced other villages, among them Vozdvizhenovka. He had a son, George, and a daughter, Vassa Trusova, who held the place of psalm-⁠reader at the same church. On 14 March 1919, after the service, he was arrested by two Red Army soldiers and taken toward the village of Taseevo, where the Bolshevik headquarters stood. He was killed in the Manganovsky pine forest. From the report of the dean: "When rumours reached me that Father Stephen had been killed in the Manganovsky forest, I asked the chief of the Kansk district militia to take measures to find his body and bring it to Kansk, to be buried in the enclosure of the Spassky cathedral of Kansk. The chief of the militia took the due measures to search for the martyr's body."

He was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church at the Council of Bishops in August 2000. He is commemorated on 11 June and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors and in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Krasnoyarsk Metropolis.