Demetrius Vorobyov

Holy Martyr Demetrius Vorobyov received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 17 August 1937, together with his brother, Simeon. They were born in the village of Klyuchevoe, in the Maksatikha district of the Tver province, in a pious peasant family, that of Mikhail Vorobyov: Simeon in 1871, and Demetrius in 1873. They are commemorated on 17 August, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 18 July, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver.

Although the brothers had no special education, they were literate and very well read in church literature and from childhood were taught to pray and to attend the church services. Both served in the army as privates: Simeon between 1903 and 1907, and Demetrius in 1914-1915. Before the revolution the brothers had small peasant farms: Simeon a horse, a cow and a sheep, and Demetrius two cows, two sheep and a windmill. Because the farms were insignificant, they were not taken during the revolution and right after it, but things changed at the beginning of the 1930s: the brothers were arrested, all their property was confiscated, and they were exiled with their families to the Urals. Simeon had two sons, Nicholas, eleven, and Michael, five, and Demetrius two daughters, fourteen and thirteen, and a son of eleven. After a year they were allowed to return to their homeland, but neither property nor farm was returned to them. Simeon had been, before the exile, warden of the church in Klyuchevoe, and the priest Alexander Dievsky, who came to the village, offered him work as a watchman at the church, and his son Nicholas he taught to sing and to read in the choir, and soon Nicholas began to carry out the service of psalm-⁠reader. Dmitry Mikhailovich made himself a small farm so as not to die of hunger in his native village. What was most precious in the brothers was faith and great love of the church, and for this reason, when Father Alexander was appointed priest at Klyuchevoe, he lived with the Vorobyov brothers; these pious families were the support of the parish.

The arrest

In 1937, on 23 July, Demetrius, Simeon and his son Nicholas were arrested and imprisoned at Bezhetsk. The interrogations began at once. The investigator asked Simeon Mikhailovich when and where he had met Dievsky. He answered that in 1930, when he was warden at the church in Klyuchevoe, the priest Alexander Stepanovich Dievsky had come, who stayed with him as a lodger; that their connection was that he served as priest, his son Nicholas as psalm-⁠reader, and he as watchman. He denied any counter-⁠revolutionary activity. The son, Nicholas, who had barely turned seventeen, was also questioned; he said that he had served as psalm-⁠reader and had done no counter-⁠revolutionary activity. On the same day Dmitry Mikhailovich was also questioned, who said that he had met the priest Alexander Stepanovich Dievsky in 1930, from the time he began to serve as priest in Klyuchevoe, that his connection with Dievsky, his brother Simeon and his nephew Nicholas consisted in going to church, and that he did not admit guilt. This was all the brothers thought fit to answer to the investigator's questions, whose only guilt was their zeal for the church. On 13 August the NKVD troika sentenced Simeon and Demetrius to death. Nicholas was not sentenced to death only because he was then seventeen, and was sentenced to eight years in a camp. The brothers Simeon and Demetrius were shot on 17 August 1937. They were numbered among the saints of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000, for veneration in the whole Church.