Theodosius Belensky

Holy Hieromartyr Theodosius Belensky, a priest, was born on 23 March 1885 in the village of Uspenskoe in the Afanasievka district of the Dnipropetrovsk region, in the family of a priest. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 11 January 1938.

Exile

He finished the theological seminary, in 1917 received priestly ordination and until 1933 served in Ukraine. In 1933 he was arrested and sentenced by the Special Council of the OGPU to three years of administrative exile in Kazakhstan; in exile he lived in the village of Vannovka. After serving his term he went to Alma-⁠Ata to the bishop to obtain a priest's post, but Bishop Alexander (Tolstopyatov) of Alma-⁠Ata had been arrested on 3 September 1936 and sentenced to three years in a camp. Then he went to Tashkent, where the bishop gave him permission to serve on condition that he submit lists of the faithful. In January 1937 he settled with the psalm-⁠reader N. Shvarov in the village of Sergeevka (Tyulkubas district, South Kazakhstan region).

Ministry at Sergeevka

A member of the church council, A. D. Aleinikov, declared: "Until 1930 we still had a church in the village. Because of the death of the warden and the lack of a priest, our group of believers fell apart. We spoke with the old women and the believers and wrote to the dean, Father Sergius, to send us a priest, and in 1936 he sent me a note that he would send one. After some time the priest Father Theodosius Belensky came from him. I told the old women, and services began to be held in my house." The case file shows that on his return from Tashkent, in the villages of Sergeevka, Antonovka, Bogoslovka and at Sastyube station, Belensky and Shvarov began to hold services without the approval of the district executive committee, without drawing up lists and signatures of believers, and that Belensky bought good sweets and gave them to schoolchildren, while at the same time agitating among his pupils to go to their relatives and come with them to services. The file also says that in February 1937, at the cooperative in Antonovka, he clearly showed dissatisfaction with Soviet power and slandered the leader of the party. Father Theodosius answered that he had been at the cooperative to buy soap and tooth powder and that he had said that the head of the party had studied in a seminary and been expelled from the fifth class for revolutionary activity; why he said it, he did not remember.

Trial and martyrdom

At the trial Father Theodosius refuted all the charges, but on 6 April 1937 the People's Court of the Tyulkubas district sentenced him to four years' imprisonment on charges of "hooliganism." The regional prosecutor's office did not agree with the decision and on 2 June 1937 decided to reclassify the case under art. 58-10 ("counter-⁠revolutionary activity"), which was done. On 4 October 1937 he was arrested again. At the interrogation he admitted that he had held services without permission, but said that he had pursued no anti-⁠Soviet aims, and that each baptism of children or service was performed with the consent of parents and believers. He was charged with having "gone through the villages, conducted anti-⁠Soviet agitation, spoken at Tyulkubas station about the Soviet Constitution, discrediting it and the leaders of the party and government, held services, urged children to go to the house of prayer." On 4 November 1937 the troika of the UNKVD for the South Kazakhstan region sentenced him to the supreme penalty. Holy Hieromartyr Theodosius was shot on 11 January 1938. His burial place is unknown.

He is commemorated on 11 January (new style) and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church on 7 February, on a movable day.