George, secular name Grigori Osipovich Konissky (Russian: Григорий Осипович Конисский; born November 20, 1717 in Nizhyn, died 13 February [O.S. 2 February] 1795 in Mogilev) was an Orthodox archbishop, preacher, philosopher and theologian. He was the son of the mayor of Nizhyn. He graduated from the Mogilev Academy and later became a lecturer there. He taught poetics, philosophy and theology successively, and in 1751 he assumed the duties of its rector. Three years later he was ordained Bishop of Mstsislaw, Mogilev and Orsha, and became Ordinary of the last Orthodox eparchy within the borders of the First Republic. 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. Defending the rights of the Orthodox population was only a pretext for the tsarina to intervene in the internal affairs of the Republic. At the same time, Bishop George acted in defense of the state of possession of the Orthodox Church in the Republic, and on several occasions addressed the Polish kings with memoranda listing the losses suffered by his denomination as a result of the activities of the Roman Catholic and Uniate Churches. He unsuccessfully demanded the legalization of conversion from Catholicism (of both rites) to Orthodoxy. He was one of the founders of the Słuck Confederation. In 1767, he published in Warsaw the Prawa i wolności dyssydentów w nabożeństwie chrześcijańskim w Koronie Polskiej i Wielkim Xięstwie Litewskim. In 1768, he contributed to the outbreak of Koliivshchyna; he and the clergy under him urged Orthodox peasants and haidamakas to rise up against the Bar Confederation, in which he saw a direct threat to his religion. After the First Partition of Poland, he continued his pastoral work in Mogilev already within the borders of the Russian Empire, but maintained contacts with the Orthodox clergy of the Republic of Poland and, until the end of his life, conducted diplomatic and propaganda activities to improve the situation of his co-religionists in that country. A staunch opponent of the Uniate Church, in 1780, with the support of the tsarist administration, he led to the closure of a number of its parishes in the Mogilev and Mstsislaw lands and the transition of more than 100,000 believers to the Russian Orthodox Church. Author of textbooks and treatises on Orthodox dogmatic and moral theology, textbooks on poetics and philosophy, homilies, polemical texts against Catholicism, as well as literary works. He wrote in Latin, Russian and Polish. In 1993 he was canonized by the Belarusian Orthodox Church as a locally venerated saint in the Mogilev and Mstsislaw eparchies. Since 2011, his cult has also been functioning in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Source: Wikipedia (en)