Presbyter
Saint John Dmitrievich of Vilnius was born in 1857 in the village of Borisoglebskoye, Yaroslavl Province. After graduating from the Yaroslavl Theological Seminary, he worked as a teacher in a zemstvo school and was later ordained as a priest. From 1882 until his martyrdom in 1918, Father John served in the village of Trofimovskoye, Poshekhonsky District.
In early November 1918, the Bolsheviks announced the mobilization of horses for the cavalry reserve at the district military commissariat. In response, peasants killed the military instructor and the clerk. A Cheka unit arrived, conducting searches with confiscation of property and arresting about forty people. On November 10, without any trial or investigation, three of the arrested, including Father John, were mutilated and shot by the Chekists in a swamp.
He was accused of hiding counter-revolutionaries and possessing valuable items belonging to the executed former owner of the Derunov factory. When the Cheka unit left the village, the bodies of the executed were carried from the swamp to the cemetery and met with a cross procession. Father John had seven children, one of whom became a priest in the same Poshekhonsky District.
