Amphilochius

Saint Amphilochius of Pochayiv was born Yakov Varnavovich Holovatiuk on 27 November 1894 in the village of Mala Ilovytsia, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine. He grew up in a pious Orthodox peasant family and from an early age was noted for meekness and churchgoing. During the First World War he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army and was wounded. After the war the region passed under Polish rule. In 1925 he entered the Pochayiv Lavra, the principal Orthodox monastery of Volhynia, as a novice.

He was tonsured a monk with the name Joseph, later ordained hierodeacon and hieromonk, and in time received the great schema, taking the name Amphilochius. He became known throughout the region as a spiritual elder and healer. Combining prayer with traditional bone-setting and other folk remedies, he received large numbers of the sick at his cell. This ministry continued through the German occupation of the Second World War and into the postwar Soviet period, when monastic life at the Lavra was tightly restricted and the authorities regarded popular elders with hostility.

In 1962 Soviet officials forcibly removed him from the monastery and confined him to a psychiatric hospital, a method frequently used against religious figures. Through the efforts of his sister he was released after some months and allowed to return to Pochayiv, where he lived more secludedly but still received those who sought his blessing. He remained at the Lavra until his death.

Amphilochius reposed on 1 January 1971 and was buried in the monastery cemetery. After the end of Soviet rule his relics were found incorrupt. On 12 May 2002 the Ukrainian Orthodox Church glorified him as a locally venerated venerable saint. He is commemorated on 1 January, the day of his repose, and on 12 May, the day of his glorification, and is remembered in western Ukraine as a humble monk, healer, and confessor of Orthodoxy under atheist persecution.