Fr. Alexander Pilipchuk died in a car accident on July 11, 2013, leaving Matushka Natalia alone with four children, one of whom is disabled with cerebral palsy.

In 2004, the family suffered a terrible ordeal when the long-awaited twin boys Savvaty and Seraphim were born very premature. Father and Matushka fought for their lives with all their might, and even had to sell their apartment to have the chance to save their children. But after two years, the infant Seraphim died.

The death of their young son and the disability of the second undermined Father’s health.

In the last years of his life, Fr. Alexander’s diabetes worsened. Although it is highly difficult for a priest to serve with such a diagnosis, he humbly bore his cross and endured the grief of illness.

On the eve of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul in 2013, Father left the village of Chernomorskoe, headed for Kirovskoe to celebrate the festal service that evening. Suffering from severe fatigue and a dramatic spike in his blood sugar levels, he fell into a coma right there behind the wheel and veered off the road.

Words can’t describe the family’s grief when their beloved husband and father died. Four months after his tragic end, Matushka gave birth to a daughter, Masha.

Savvaty is wheelchair-bound with severe cerebral palsy, constantly under his mother’s supervision. He can’t walk without assistance or barely move at all, and he doesn’t speak well. He will need lifelong treatment and rehabilitation, and if he doesn’t get it, the disease will take its toll, and he won’t be able to move at all.

Matushka Natalia is now fighting for his health alone, never leaving him even for a minute.

Father’s orphaned family needs our help.

Matushka doesn’t work because she is always with her disabled son. Their entire income consists of the children’s pension and state benefits for the poor.

The parish helps as it can, but it is very poor and cannot fully support the family, mainly providing them with food. The family also has a garden that provides some food. They live in a small house in a remote village. It’s very difficult to get to the nearest city, and their house always needs work, which also requires money, which they never seem to have enough of.

For Matushka, the most important thing now is to take care of her sick son, but the other children need a lot too. Getting them an education is a huge part of the family’s expenses, which can’t be borne alone by a poor widow with a disabled child in arms. It’s a big struggle just to provide them all with clothes and shoes, let alone an education.

The future priest Alexander Pilipchuk was born to a family of simple workers on March 26, 1978, in the city of Kharkov. His mother and grandmother instilled the love of God in him from early childhood, taking him to churches and monasteries with them.

Thanks to his Christian upbringing, Alexander dreamed of being a priest from a young age, when he fell in love with the services and the splendor of the churches. He entered the Volyn Theological Seminary at the age of 16.

The Lord generously endowed His disciple with various talents, and he was known to have a naturally good ear and a beautiful voice.

After seminary, he constantly prayed for the gift of a wife, and in 1999, the future Fr. Alexander met a beautiful and faithful girl named Natalia.

In 2001, at the age of just 23, he was ordained a priest and sent to the Church of the Joy of All Who Sorrow Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Dalokoe in the Chernomorskoe Region of Crimea. His difficult priestly ministry had begun, but despite his young age, Fr. Alexander was fully prepared for it and bravely overcame all difficulties—after all, he’d dreamed about it since childhood.

Unfortunately, he was destined for a short life, and he always seemed to be in a rush to do more.

The ministry literally took over the young pastor. A year after being ordained, Father opened the Church of the Holy Spirit in the village of Kirovskoe himself, where he was the rector until the day of his tragic death.

Before him, there was neither a church nor a community in the village, and Fr. Alexander created everything from scratch. The villagers needed pastoral care, but had been left like sheep without a shepherd for many long years. Therefore, the opening of the church in one of the rooms of a former department store and the beginning of regular services was a significant event in the life of the village.

By Fr. Alexander’s labors, the village flourished spiritually, and a Christian community appeared.

Священник: Fr. Alexander Pilipchuk
Матушка: Matushka Natalia Pilipchuk
Место жительства: Village Kirovskoe, Republic of Crimea, Russia.