Demetrius Nerovetsky

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Nerovetsky, a priest, was born on 30 May 1887 in the village of Velikaya Mechetnya, in the Balta district of the Podolia province, in the family of a psalm-⁠reader, and received a martyr's death in March 1919, in Siberia, in the Kansk district, tormented and burned by Red partisans. He was glorified among the new martyrs of Russia at the Council of Bishops in August 2000. He is commemorated on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Krasnoyarsk Metropolis.

His life

In 1903 he finished the two-⁠class school in his native village and on 27 August was appointed second teacher of the church school in Berezovka. In May 1904 he was received among the singers of the bishop's house in Kamenets-⁠Podolsk, in 1907 he became a psalm-⁠reader at the church in Olkhovets, and on 22 March 1909 he was ordained deacon. At the beginning of 1916 he moved with his family to the Yenisei province, to the Yenisei diocese. On 20 January 1916 he was assigned to a vacant priest's place in the village of Apanskoe, in the Kansk district, and on 17 April 1916 Bishop Nikon of Yenisei ordained him priest for the church of Saint Nicholas in Apan. The parish was extensive and included, besides Apan, ten more villages. From October 1916 he taught religion at the schools of Apan and Zimnikovo. The dean's report, filed after the death of Father Demetrius, says of him that he was a very good man, very zealous as a minister of the Church, a wonderful family man and an invaluable colleague, loving toward the parishioners. His guilt before the Bolsheviks, the report said, was that he walked straight in life, without bowing to both sides, looking only upward; that he lived for the parish, did not merely serve but burned in the field of Christ. His arrest was also helped by his own psalm-⁠reader, Kovbasa, a very poor psalm-⁠reader and a drunkard and brawler, whom the priest had tolerated, pitying his large family.

His suffering

At the end of November 1918 a band of Red partisans, under the command of D. A. Apanovich, known for his cruelty, occupied the village of Apanskoe. Together with the volost elder they seized Father Demetrius too, accusing him of speaking against the partisans, but he was soon released. He was arrested again in 1919, before Great Lent, and was set free. The last time he was arrested was on 8 March 1919, the Saturday of the first week of Great Lent. The dean wrote that the priest was taken after vespers. He had come back from church and gone into the bedroom to take off his cassock when two men with guns came in after him without warning, told him he was arrested and led him to the court house. He thought he was being taken to questioning and said nothing at home. Beside the court house there was a sleigh, in which they put him and drove him along the road to the village of Baikan. They did not allow him to take leave of his family and put on a fur coat; he went in a thin quilted cassock. A little way from Apan they stripped him, took off his boots, tied him by the neck with a rope to the shaft and drove the horse on. He had to run through deep snow, stripped, in stockings; he could not keep up, stumbled, fell into drifts, was dragged on the rope, and those who dragged him struck him with a whip and with rifle butts. He barely reached Baikan, twelve versts from Apan. There, in a house, with the owners driven out, they continued the torment: they took fire from the stove and burned his hair and body. Exhausted, frozen, beaten, burned, the priest could endure no more and lost his mind; he kept asking where his cap and mittens were. The tormentors answered that he would not need them, for soon he would be warm. They tied him again and set out, but he could no longer move; they threw him into the sleigh and covered him with snow. The Reds told everyone that they had taken him to Taseevo for questioning, that he was alive and well. The priest's wife searched for him long, in vain. When the snow melted, the body could be seen from the road, and the Bolsheviks took it to the thirty-⁠second verst from Apan, made a fire and burned the martyr's remains. One Bolshevik carved a cross on a pine beside the fire, but the commander ordered the cross cut off and the place smeared with mud. A wife and two sons, aged ten and six, were left, without any means.

In the years 2002-2007 research was done on the life, suffering and death of the holy martyr, excavations were made at the site of the supposed burial and all who could still tell something were questioned. At the place of the killing a veneration cross was set up and an Orthodox documentary film was made.