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The legend of his death describes a ritual murder which has been described as a blood libel. His feast day is held on April 20 / May 3. The revival of his cult in Belarus and Russia in the 1990s raised concerns among some human rights organizations.
Shutko, a Jewish arendator of Zverki, was accused of bringing the boy to Białystok, poking him with sharp objects and draining his blood for nine days, then bringing the dead body back to Zverki and dumping it in a local field
In 1755 his relics were transferred to Slutsky Monastery of Saint Trinity (Слуцкий Свято-Троицкий монастырь), Minsk Guberniya, attached was a placard blaming Jews for his death. His cult developed and spread throughout the Russian Empire, and the boy was canonized in 1820.
He is considered the patron saint of children. In 1944, they were moved to Grodno, where they stayed until 1992, when they were moved to Białystok (Свято-Никольский собор) where they are still the focus of pilgrimages.
According to a report by the first deputy of the Euro-Asiatic Jewish Congress, Doctor Yakov Basin, and published by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews (UCSJ) in July 1997,
Contemporary accounts, which claim that Jews murdered a boy in a ritual manner in order to use his blood, are resurrecting the medieval canard that Jews use the blood of Christian babies for their ritual purposes during pre-Passover days.
On April 11, 1690, a few days before the beginning of Passover, 6 year-old Gavril Belostoksky allegedly was found murdered and drained of his blood in his village of Zverki, which was at the time a Belarusian town, but is now in Polish territory. Soon thereafter, the accusation that he had been murdered by Jews who needed his blood to bake matzoth was spread throughout Belarus. In the same month as the UCSJ report, Belorussian state television aired a film continuing to propagate this blood libel.
The revival of the cult in Belarus was cited as a dangerous expression of antisemitism in United States State Department reports on human rights and religious freedoms and were passed to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.