Demetrius Belyaev

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Belyaev, a priest, was born on 1 December 1875 in the village of Troparevo, in the Mozhaisk district of the Moscow province, now in Moscow, in a priest's family. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 10 December 1937, at Butovo, near Moscow. He was rehabilitated on 28 July 1989, and in 2006 his name was entered in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 10 December (27 November by the old calendar), in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Bogorodsk, on 29 May, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.

He finished the theological seminary in Moscow and between September 1896 and October 1899 was a teacher at the parish school at the Burkhino graveyard, in the Bronnitsy district. In 1899 he was ordained priest at the church of the icon of the Mother of God Joy of All Who Sorrow in the village of Putilovo, in the Dmitrov district, and in February 1904 he was transferred to the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Balobanovo. From March 1904 until May 1918 he taught at the zemstvo school in Balobanovo. With his wife Maria Alexandrovna he had eight children, five sons and three daughters. The large family lived in a house which, according to the clergy register of the Trinity church for 1919, had been built on the church's homestead land through the effort of Father Demetrius Belyaev in 1905 and was his property. The fate of the children after the revolution is not known; in the questionnaire of 1937, filled in after his arrest, only the youngest is mentioned, Nikolai, twenty-⁠two years old, who then lived in Moscow.

At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s the church in Balobanovo was closed, and Father Demetrius moved to the village of Voskresenskoe, to the church of the Protection of the Mother of God, the last place of his service. He was arrested on 26 November 1937, together with the clergy of the nearest church, that of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Yamkino, the deacon Nikolai Shirogorov and the psalm-⁠reader Mikhail Amelyushkin, and with Archpriest Nikolai Pokrovsky, who came to confess to Father Demetrius. Among the charges was that under the guise of church singing he attracted the young, among whom he conducted counter-⁠revolutionary agitation. Father Demetrius did not admit guilt of counter-⁠revolutionary activity. The troika at the NKVD of the Moscow region condemned him to death, and on 10 December 1937 he was shot at Butovo and buried in an unknown common grave.