George, secular name Grigori Osipovich Konissky (Russian: Григорий Осипович Конисский; born November 20, 1717 in Nizhyn, died 13 February [O.S.

Sincerely devoted to Russia, from 1762 he played a significant role in Tsarina Catherine II's policy toward the Republic, collaborating with Russian MP Nikolai Repnin in the campaign for the equality of dissidents.

[2] According to various sources, he took his perpetual monastic vows while he was still a student, on 11 April 1744, at the hands of Kiev Metropolitanate Raphael,[1] or only in 1749,[3] when he had already served as prefect of the Mogilev Academy and as a philosophy lecturer for two years.

Appealing to the king to incorporate the Belarussian eparchy into the Archeparchy of Polotsk-Vitebsk, he used a false privilege from Sigismund III Vasa, who supposedly sanctioned this solution.

[4] Nevertheless, the efforts of Metropolitanate Florian Hrebnicki were supported by Pope Benedict XIV, who sent a papal brief to King August III demanding the liquidation of the Belarusian eparchy by incorporating it into the Uniate Church.

August III, under pressure from Gross, the Russian deputy in Warsaw, confirmed the rights of the Orthodox to the eparchies of Mstsislaw, Mogilev and Orsha.

As early as February 1756, he sent to the Most Holy Synod hieromonk, Johann of the Resurrection Monastery in Shklov [pl], with letters informing them of the material situation of his administration.

The hierarch received additional funds for the organization of a seminary in Mogilev; in his letter to the Synod, he pointed to the low intellectual level of the clergy and the lack of educated priests as a major problem.

According to the acts of foundation, some of the monasteries operating in the territory under the authority of the Belarusian bishops were subordinated directly to the Constantinopolitan Patriarchs or their exarchs (Metropolitanates of Kiev).

[6] Attempts to change this situation and subordinate all monasteries located within the borders of the eparchy to its ordinaries had already been made by Bishop George's predecessors, but their efforts did not bring the expected result, and only caused competence disputes and personal conflicts that dragged on for years.

In a letter to the Metropolitanate of Kiev, he argued that only as the direct head of the monastic communities would he be able to bring the necessary discipline and order to them, citing cases of their violation in the monasteries of Tupichevshchina and Kutein near Orsha.

Monasteries previously controlled by the Kiev metropolitans de iure remained under their jurisdiction; it was they who approved candidates for community superiors and had the right to dismiss them.

Formally, the retention of the Kiev Metropolitanate's jurisdiction was intended to provide the monasteries with Russian protection and defense in the event that Catholics made claims against them.

As the bishop wrote, the authorities of the Republic accepted this state of affairs, citing the fact that the Treaty of Perpetual Peace of 1686 made no mention of the functioning of Orthodox theological schools.

During his tenure as Bishop of Mstsislaw, Mogilev and Orsha, Russia's influence on the legal position of the Orthodox in the Republic, as well as on their political attitudes, increased significantly.

[6] In 1762, he traveled to Moscow for the coronation of Catherine II and there, on October 10, delivered a speech of allegiance in which he encouraged the tsarina to defend Orthodoxy in Poland.

[8] Catherine II was not a religious person herself, but she saw the lack of equality for Orthodox in the Republic as a good excuse to intervene in the country's domestic politics.

[8] In February 1763, based on documents gathered by the Belarusian bishop and by Kiev's Metropolitanate Arsenius, the Most Holy Synod formulated a petition to the tsarina, once again asking her to come to the defense of Orthodox believers in the Republic.

The new Archbishop of Polotsk and Metropolitanate of Kiev, Jason Smogorzewski, supported by Pope Clement XII, issued several decrees addressed to the Orthodox faithful and clergy.

[2] Bishop George also demanded the return of the property of the Belarusian eparchy seized by the great Lithuanian writer Antoni Michał Pac [pl] – the villages of Pechersk, Borsuki, Ćwirków and Tarasowicze.

[12] Attached to the memorandum was Rejestr monasterów i cerkwi Grecko-ruskich różnemi czasy na unię gwałtownie odjętych, sporządzony junii die 3, Anno 1765.

[13] Contrary to his expectations, the hierarch also failed to obtain a seat in the Senate, and Russia did not support his efforts in this direction, probably so that George (Konissky) would not in time become a loyal and active citizen of the Republic.

[1] Together with Smolensk Bishop Parthenius Sopkowski [pl], he also compiled a work describing the duties and tasks of the clergy entitled O dołżnostiach prieswitierov prichodskich.

[16] Initially, however, the Russian authorities did not accept Bishop George's plans to carry out a complete liquidation of the Uniate faith on the territory of the Orthodox eparchy of Mogilev.

[16] It was not until seven years later that the Bishop of Mogilev was granted the right to incorporate vacant Unitarian parishes into the Orthodox Church, subject to the faithful's consent to change their religion.

He also opened charitable institutions and hospitals in his eparchy, and inspired the custom of distributing alms to the poor and sick in Orthodox churches every Saturday.

[2] He was the author of the first systematic textbook of theology in the Russian Orthodox Church – a treatise Cristiana orthodoxa Theologia, written in Latin for the Mogilev Academy.

[7] After 1774, the clergyman also wrote the historical Istoricheskoye izvestiye o yeparchii Mogilevskoy, a work that synthetically presents the history of Orthodox administrations in the Belarusian and Ukrainian lands.

At the same time, some historians of Russian homiletics accused him of shallowness of thought, unjustified formulation of analogies between events in biblical history and his contemporary situations, and weaving vulgar jokes and word games into his sermons.

In August of that year, the Belarusian Orthodox Church recognized him as a locally venerated saint in the Mogilev and Mstsislaw eparchies,[7] thanks to the special efforts of its Ordinary, Bishop Maxim [pl].