Hieromartyr
Hieromartyr Mitrophan (Krasnopolsky)
1869 — 1919
Also known as: Митрофан Астраханский, Димитрий Иванович Краснопольский, Сщмч. Митрофан (Краснопольский), архиеп. Астраханский
Bishop of Gomel and Minsk, from 1916 Archbishop of Astrakhan and member of the 1917–1918 Local Council; shot by the Cheka in Astrakhan in 1919.
Hieromartyr Mitrophan (Dmitry Ivanovich Krasnopolsky) was born on 22 October 1869 in the village of Alekseyevka, Voronezh province, into a poor peasant family. After the Voronezh Seminary he married and was ordained deacon in 1890. Widowed in 1893, he entered the Kiev Theological Academy, took monastic vows with the name Mitrophan in 1896 and was ordained hieromonk in 1897.
He served as inspector of the Irkutsk Seminary and from 1902 as rector of the Mogilev Seminary. In 1907 he was consecrated Bishop of Gomel, vicar of the Mogilev diocese, and was elected to the Third State Duma. From 1912 he was Bishop of Minsk, organising aid for refugees and hospitals for the wounded during the First World War, and from 1916 Bishop of Astrakhan. A member of the Local Council of 1917–1918, he supported the restoration of the patriarchate and was raised to archbishop in 1918.
When the Bolsheviks held Astrakhan he refused to flee. He was arrested on 8 June 1919, accused of a "White Guard conspiracy", and shot on 6 July 1919; Archpriest Dimitry Stefanovsky secretly buried his body near the Pokrovo-Boldinsky monastery. He was glorified in 2001 and is commemorated on 23 June / 6 July.