Victor Yavorsky

Saint Victor Nikolaevich Yavorsky, hieromartyr, was a priest in Kharkiv and received the martyr's death by shooting in January 1938, during the Soviet persecution. He is venerated as a local saint of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and commemorated on 19 May.

Russian sources give his birth as 2 April 1873, in the village of Korochino in the Siedlce governorate, while other lists give the year 1878. When he was arrested on 20 December 1937 he was a priest without a parish and lived in Kharkiv. The investigation file mentions his family, his wife Catherine, his daughter Barbara and his son Boris.

Accused of activity against the Soviet state, he was sentenced to death on 25 December 1937. The sentence was carried out on 13 January 1938.

On 22 June 1993 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided on his local canonization in the Kharkiv diocese, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Sloboda land. The service of glorification took place on 3 and 4 July 1993 in the Annunciation cathedral of Kharkiv, during the visit of Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and all Ukraine.

His canonization is local and not that of the whole Orthodox Church.