Demetrius Ovechkin

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Ovechkin, a priest (1877-1937), served at the cathedrals of the town of Osa, in the Perm region, and received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 14 November 1937. He was born on 25 May 1877 in the village of Malye Podberezy, in the Kazan province, in a peasant's family. He was glorified in 2000. He is commemorated on 14 November, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 14 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis.

In 1896 he finished the Kazan teachers' seminary and was a teacher of mathematics, intending to devote his life to the teaching of peasant children. In Kazan he met his future wife, Olga Grigorievna Kitaeva, the daughter of pious merchants of the Urals, who taught Russian at the school. For a few years they were teachers in the Urals, then moved to Osa, where the wife's parents lived. Here Dmitry Kiprianovich resolved to become a priest, entered the theological seminary and, after finishing, was ordained priest at the Dormition cathedral in Osa. In 1917, with the money of the townspeople, the cathedral of the Holy Trinity was built, and Father Demetrius began to serve in it. From childhood he taught his children to live by the commandments of the Gospel. Once his daughter found a coin near the house and ran joyfully to tell her parents. Father Demetrius, listening to her, frowned and told her to take it and put it back where she had found it, because she had not lost it and it was not hers.

In 1922 the confiscation of valuables from the churches began. Father Demetrius refused to cooperate with the commission, was arrested and spent about a year in prison. After his release, in 1923, he took up service again. In frost and in storm, by day and by night, he went to perform rites, refusing no one. He was summoned several times to the GPU in Osa, where he was offered cooperation, but refused. In 1925 the authorities proposed that he become a Renovationist bishop, and he refused. The priest and his family were evicted from the church house and had to wander long, renting lodgings. In the 1920s the authorities organised disputes on religious themes, and the priest resolved to take part. His wife urged him not to, for they would put him in prison again, but he took a firm decision to defend the Christian faith before the atheist lecturers and took part in all three disputes held in Perm. Right after that he was arrested and sentenced to three years, which he served in the salt mines at Solikamsk. He returned from the camp an invalid, with diseased legs and a damaged spine. He was sent into forced residence in the town of Kudymkar, where his wife and son came to him. In 1936 they all moved to the eldest daughter, who then lived in Maikop. Olga Grigorievna longed for her homeland and often said to her husband: Dmitry, let us go to die at Osa. The priest wavered for a time, but in the autumn of 1937 he yielded to his wife's pleas. It was the time of the most merciless persecution. As soon as he arrived in the town, the priest was arrested, sentenced to death and shot on 14 November 1937.