Demetrius Semyonov

Holy Hieromartyr Demetrius Semyonov was a priest in the diocese of Stavropol, born on 30 October 1873 in the village of Beshpagir and killed in the same village, in the night of 14 to 15 June (27 to 28 June on the new calendar) 1918, by men of the Red Army. He was numbered among the saints of the Russian Church in 2022. He is remembered on 27 June (14 June on the old calendar), the day of his death, and on the day of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (9 February, a movable day).

Family and service

His father, Priest Eutychius Emelyanovich Semyonov (1843 to 1914), was a cleric of the Stavropol diocese, and his mother was Varvara Alexandrovna (1852 to 1918). He completed three classes at the Stavropol seminary. From 1894 to 1896 he was a teacher. In 1896 he entered the service of the Church and was appointed to a deacon-⁠teacher's place at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Vinodelnoe, and then ordained deacon. From 1897 to March 1909 he was a cleric at the Transfiguration church in the village of Novoselitskoe.

At the time of the mass resettlement to Siberia, after Stolypin's agrarian reform, he asked, among the first in the Stavropol diocese, to be transferred to the diocese of Tomsk. He was ordained priest on 31 May 1909 and for more than four years devoted his pastoral service to the good order of the parish of the church of the Holy Archangel Michael in the village of Taskaevskoe, in the Kainsk district, diocese of Tomsk. He had to return to the Stavropol province to care for his aged father. From 24 September 1913 he served in the church of the Exaltation of the Cross in the village of Beshpagir.

Martyrdom

During the civil war the holy hieromartyr Demetrius warned in his sermons that robbery is a crime. On 14 (27) June 1918 Red Army men entered Beshpagir, came to the priest's house and demanded to be fed. When they had eaten their fill, they told him that he would now be safe, and left. But on the same day Father Demetrius was arrested twice. After half an hour they sent a guard for him and took him to the district board, where the staff of the revolutionary detachment was. There they mocked him in every way. His wife, who was expecting a child at that time, asked for his release and the priest was let go, but after a while he was arrested again. They accused him of having sheltered the detachment of Colonel Shkuro when it passed through Beshpagir.

Father Demetrius was long tormented and mocked, and then told to prepare himself. They took him out of the village, not far from the holy spring (now Gorodkovaya street in Beshpagir). The priest asked permission to pray before death. He had scarcely finished the prayer when the executioners fell on him and hacked his head with sabres. His lifeless body was thrown into a ravine near the place of execution. Witnesses report that the Red soldiers said then that he would no longer call anyone to come to their senses. Father Demetrius was killed in the night of 14/27 to 15/28 June 1918, together with a few men of Beshpagir and up to twenty inhabitants of neighbouring villages. The next morning the priest's body was found outside the village, and his burial was forbidden.

Burial and canonization

After the Reds left the village, the villagers buried their shepherd in the grounds of the church of the Exaltation of the Cross. Almost the whole village came out to accompany the martyr's remains, and many wept for his untimely death. The church was closed in 1936 and completely destroyed in 1943, and Father Demetrius's grave was lost.

In 2019 the name of the slain priest Demetrius Semyonov was entered in the Synodikon of the archpastors, pastors, monastics and laity of the Metropolis of Stavropol who suffered in the time of persecution, and was commemorated at the memorial services held in the parishes of the Stavropol region on the day of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs. On 25 August 2022 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church entered the name of the holy hieromartyr Demetrius Semyonov in the list by name of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and blessed that his memory be kept on the day of his martyrdom, that molebens be served to him and icons be painted.