Presbyter
Saint Vladimir was born on July 2, 1885, in the village of Dudichi, Igumensky district of the Minsk province, in the family of priest Ilarion Pasternatsky. After graduating from the Minsk Theological Seminary in 1908, he married Natalia, the daughter of priest Theophan Sosinovsky. They had eight children. Vladimir Ilarionovich was ordained a priest at the church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in the village of Pesochnoye, where he served until 1932. In the 1920s, he was appointed dean and elevated to the rank of protopresbyter. In 1931, the priest's family was offered to pay a tax that was so high they could not gather the required amount, and their cow was taken away. In 1932, Father Vladimir was transferred to the Spaso-Ascension Church in the town of Kopyl.
In 1933, all churches in the Kopyl district were closed, and the priests were arrested; only the Spaso-Ascension Church remained. Father Vladimir traveled all day fulfilling needs, baptizing newborns, and conducting funerals. In March 1936, he was arrested on charges of usurping administrative authority. On March 24, 1936, he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and sent to correctional labor colony No. 1 in the settlement of Khylch, Gomel region.
Natalia Feofanovna was left alone with three minor children without means of subsistence. In 1936, she moved with the children to the city of Roslavl. In December 1937, Father Vladimir was released, but a day later he was arrested again on charges of 'active counter-revolutionary agitation.' On January 5, 1938, the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Protopresbyter Vladimir Pasternatsky was shot on January 21, 1938, and buried in a common unmarked grave.
In 1958, Natalia Feofanovna, working for her husband's rehabilitation, wrote to the authorities: 'I ask to rehabilitate my husband... He was neither a thief, nor a hooligan, nor a murderer, nor an enemy of the people, but a zealous preacher of the Gospel truth, proclaiming peace and love among people.'
