Elias Benemansky

Saint Elias Benemansky, hieromartyr, was a priest of the diocese of Tver, born in 1883, sentenced to death and shot on 31 December 1937. He was canonized in the year 2000. He is commemorated by the old calendar on 28 January and on 18 December.

He was born in the family of the priest Elias Benemansky. In 1905 he finished the Tver seminary and was sent into the army. He served a year at an army church as psalm-⁠reader, about a year and a half as deacon, and in 1908 he was ordained priest and sent to the 13th Grenadier Regiment. He took part in the First World War. In 1917 he was priest of the 265th Vyshny Volochyok Infantry Regiment.

On 9 February 1920 the Cheka of Tver decided: "Priest Benemansky to be held in a concentration camp until the end of the civil war." On 13 February the Cheka sent to the head of the Tver city militia the order to take the priest of the church of Alexander Nevsky, Benemansky, to the camp. In 1922 Father Elias was arrested again by the GPU, together with the clergy, right after a service at the Nilov hermitage, and held a week and a half in prison.

The NKVD troika sentenced him to death on 29 December 1937, "for counter-⁠revolutionary activity", even before the indictment was drawn up. The priest Elias Benemansky was executed on the same day as Archbishop Thaddeus, 31 December 1937.