Vladimir Khirasko

Holy Confessor Vladimir Khirasko was an archpriest in Minsk and died in 1932 or shortly after, gravely ill after years of prison and exile, for his faith and ministry.

He was born on 11 January 1874 in the town of Petrovsk in Kiev province, in the family of the priest Gregory Khirasko. After the seminary he was a teacher in parish schools. In 1899 he was ordained priest for the church of the Ascension in the village of Omelno, Igumen district, Minsk province, where he served eight years, then at the church of Saint George in Yurevichi. In 1911 he was appointed rector of the church of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" in Minsk, built beside the school for the blind. He taught the Law of God at the boys' and girls' gymnasiums, served on the diocesan board of aid for the poor of the clerical estate, and was raised to archpriest. In 1919 he was arrested and soon freed. He was arrested a second time on 29 December 1925, accused of ties with the Polish consulate general. Parishioners wrote warm letters to him in prison, calling him their innocent spiritual father and saying that they wept for his undeserved suffering. The investigators found the letters and demanded that he name the writers, but he flatly refused. In March 1926 he was sentenced to three years of exile at Orel.

In the spring of 1929 he returned to Minsk and served at the same church. Soon an article appeared in the newspaper "Rabochy" accusing him of counter-⁠revolutionary activity, and on 26 March 1929 he was arrested. At the investigation he told briefly how he had spoken to the parishioners on his return, about forgiveness on Forgiveness Sunday and about the prayer "Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom" before communion, and said that nothing in his words was counter-⁠revolutionary in character. He was nonetheless sentenced to three years in prison. He came out in 1932, very ill, and died after a few months.

The saint is commemorated on 24 January and, in the new style, on 7 February (movable) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 11 July (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Belarus, on 8 August (movable) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Smolensk and on 8 December in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Smolensk Land.