Before their arrest in 1950 Sisters Olympia Bida and Lavrentia Gerasimiv of the Holy Congregation of St Joseph (Graeco-Catholic Church) were secret members of a monastic community in Khyrov, West Ukraine. They were sentenced to perpetual exile, died in Kharsk and were buried in the village graveyard.

In 2001 they were canonised by Pope John Paul II. For a long while their burial place was unknown. In June 2002 the graves of the Sisters of St Joseph were first visited and Father Alexei Barannikov, a Uniate priest from Novokuznetsk, and Father Andrzej Duklewski, a Roman Catholic priest from Tomsk, performed the Service for the Dead there. In 2006 a partial exhumation took place and forensic examination of the remains was conducted: I.I. Prudnikov of the Molchanovsky district represented the local administration. The remains were taken to Ukraine where they are held in the provincial house of the Sisters of St Joseph in Lviv. On 22 September 2007 thanks to the efforts of parishioners of the catholic church in Tomsk a sculpture of the Virgin Mary was placed over the burial of the sisters in Kharsk, with a gravestone bearing the words:

“Sister Olympia Bida (1903-1952) / ‘We are Christ’s and he is ours’ / Sister Lavrentia Gerasimiv (1911-1952) / ‘Trust in the Lord’ / Sisters of St Joseph exiled to Siberia for their faith in 1950. Here they died as martyrs. On 21 June 2001 Pope John Paul II canonised Sisters Olympia and Lavrentia. Holy martyrs Olympia and Lavrentia, pray for us!”