Demetrius Legeydo

Saint Demetrius Legeydo was a priest and martyr, born in 1880 in the village of Velyki Sorochyntsi, Mirgorod district, Poltava governorate, and died on 23 March 1938 in prison. He was numbered among the saints, the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, for veneration throughout the Church, by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of 13 to 16 August 2000 in Moscow, on the proposal of the Alma-⁠Ata diocese. He is commemorated on 10 (23) March, the day of his death, and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

His father was a well-⁠to-⁠do Cossack, who engaged in trade. In 1904 Demetrius graduated from the theological seminary in Tiflis and was ordained deacon for the church in the village of Nina, Stavropol governorate, and in the same year priest, and served in the church of the stanitsa of Neberdzhaevskaya, Temryuk district of the Kuban region. In 1918, in the stanitsa of Neberdzhaevskaya, he interceded for a Red Guardsman condemned to death, who was already being led to execution, and saved his life. In August 1931 he was appointed to serve at the Ascension church in the city of Gelendzhik, Krasnodar region. By his active pastoral work and sermons he drew the attention of the OGPU and on 21 April 1932 was arrested on the charge of anti-⁠Soviet religious activity directed against the measures of the Soviet power. He did not admit guilt. By questioning parishioners and local people it was not possible to establish the existence of an anti-⁠Soviet group, nevertheless on 28 November 1932 the Special Conference attached to the OGPU Collegium sentenced Father Demetrius to three years of exile in Kazakhstan; he served his term at Chimkent, where he worked as collector-⁠accountant.

There, on 11 September 1937, the authorities arrested him on the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and he was imprisoned in the Chimkent prison. He did not admit guilt, but on 19 November 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment in a corrective labour camp. On 21 January 1938 he arrived with the Alma-⁠Ata convoy at the 10th section of Bamlag. On the charge of shirking work, on 31 March 1938 he was sentenced to death by the special troika of the UNKVD for the Far Eastern Region. The source says, however, that he died on 23 March 1938 in prison, before the sentence was carried out, a date that comes before that of the sentence, which does not fit; he was buried in an unknown grave.

At Gelendzhik, in the cathedral of the Ascension of the Lord, in which Demetrius Legeydo served until his arrest in 1932, on 23 March, the day of commemoration of the holy hieromartyr Demetrius, festal services and the traditional diocesan procession with the saint's icon are held, in which the clergy of the diocese, the parishioners of the cathedral and the inhabitants and guests of the city take part. On the wall of the church of the Ascension of the Lord in Gelendzhik a memorial plaque is set with the image of Demetrius Legeydo, saying that in this church in the years 1932 and 1933 the holy hieromartyr Demetrius Legeydo (1880 to 1938) bore his pastoral ministry, now glorified among the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church.