Onuphrius (Gagalyuk)

Onuphrius (in the world Anton Maksimovich Gagalyuk) was born on 2 April 1889 in Posad Poshekhon, Kherson Governorate, in the Russian Empire, into the family of a church psalm-reader. Raised in a devout Orthodox household, he received his theological education first at the Odessa Theological Seminary, which he completed in 1911, and then at the Kiev Theological Academy, graduating in 1915 with the degree of candidate of theology. While still a student at the academy he was tonsured a monk, receiving the name Onuphrius in honor of the fourth-century desert father Saint Onuphrius the Great, and was ordained hierodeacon and subsequently hieromonk.

After completing his academic studies he taught at theological seminaries, including the Kholm Theological Seminary, and served in pastoral and educational posts during the years of war and revolution. In January 1923 he was consecrated Bishop of Elisavetgrad, a vicar bishop in the Kherson-Odessa region. From the outset of his episcopate he opposed the Renovationist schism, a modernist movement that cooperated with Soviet authorities against the canonical Church headed by Patriarch Tikhon. His refusal to join the schism led to repeated arrests in the 1920s.

He later served as Bishop of Belgorod, a vicar of the Kursk diocese, and in 1929 was made Archbishop of Kursk and Oboyan. He continued to govern his diocese under mounting persecution, church closures, and police surveillance. Arrested again in Kursk in 1935, he received a term of imprisonment. During the Great Terror a further case was opened against him; an NKVD troika sentenced him to death.

Archbishop Onuphrius was shot on 1 June 1938. The place of his burial is unknown, as was usual for those executed in that campaign. In August 2000 the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him as a hieromartyr among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 1 June, the day of his death, and with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church. He is remembered as a hierarch who would not accept schism or submit to the atheist state.