Elias Bazhanov

Holy Hieromartyr Elias Bazhanov, a protopresbyter, was born on 24 July 1877 in the village of Selishchi in the Kasimov district of the Ryazan province, in the family of the psalmist Vasily Alexeyevich Bazhanov and his wife Tatiana Ismailovna. He finished the Ryazan Theological Seminary. He received the crown of martyrdom on 16 September 1937.

In 1900 he took a post as teacher at the parish school in the village of Kochemary. In 1901 Bishop Polyeuctus (Pyaskovsky) of Ryazan and Zaraysk appointed him deacon at the Kazan church in Malakhovo, where he was also ordained and went on teaching at the village school. At his own request he was moved on 13 November 1904 to serve as deacon at the Church of the Protection in the village of Nikitkino, in the Yegoryevsk district, built in 1842 by the Moscow merchants Semyon and Chrysanthus Kurov. He served there for nearly ten years. On 23 June 1914 he was transferred as a priest to the church of Saint Nicholas in Ksenofontovo, and on 19 July he was ordained priest by Bishop Ambrose (Smirnov) of Mikhailov, vicar of Ryazan. All this time he was also catechist at the Kochemary parish school.

Later he served in the village of Karamyshevo, where the Saint Vladimir parish school was the pride of the parish and the diocese: children received books free of charge, and from 1892 a free canteen had been run with money sent anonymously by a benefactor in Moscow. For his zeal over many years he was raised to the rank of protopresbyter. After the revolution the school was gone and faith began to fade. Priests were removed from teaching, but Father Elias kept meeting young people and speaking to them of the Word of God, and the authorities found him doing so more than once.

He was arrested on 20 August 1937. At the interrogation he admitted the charges only in part: he said that he had spoken of the faith not only to the young but to others. It grieved him that in the village processions with icons, baptisms and weddings were forbidden. Once the women did not allow him to be arrested, and the faithful stood up for him again when he was put out of his house. The troika of the NKVD Directorate of the Moscow region sentenced him to death on 15 September 1937, and the sentence was carried out on 16 September. He was buried near Butovo, on the fenced ground of the former NKVD firing range. He was rehabilitated by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 16 January 1989.

Father Elias was the elder brother of Holy Hieromartyr Constantine Bazhanov, canonized by the Council of Bishops in August 2000, who was shot on 23 December 1937. Saint Elias was glorified as a hieromartyr by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church on 12 March 2002. The Church commemorates him on 16 September, the day of his death, in the new style, and also on 23 June (Council of the Saints of Ryazan) and on the movable days of the Council of the New Martyrs of Butovo and of the Saints of Moscow.