1878–1918
A priest martyred in the Soviet persecution (1918)
New Hieromartyr Demetrius Spassky, Priest
Demetrius Spassky (Dmitry Vassianovich Spassky) was a Russian Orthodox priest martyred during the Bolshevik persecution of the Church in 1918. He is commemorated as a new hieromartyr on September 6, and is numbered among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
According to Russian hagiographical sources, he served a rural parish in the north of European Russia, in the region of the present-day Komi Republic, and was executed by Soviet authorities in the autumn of 1918. He was formally canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2001.
Russian sources record that Demetrius Spassky was born in 1878 in the Ust-Sysolsk district of Vologda province, in the Russian north. He was ordained to the diaconate and then to the priesthood around 1908 by the bishop of Veliky Ustyug, and was appointed to serve a parish church in the area of Ust-Nem, in the territory of the modern Komi Republic.
In 1918, amid the Soviet campaign against the clergy that followed the Russian Revolution, Father Demetrius was condemned to death by the local revolutionary authorities (the Cheka) and shot. Russian accounts place his execution in September 1918, near the village of Pomozdino. The Orthodox calendar commemorates him on September 6.
In 2001 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him as a saint and included him among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the twentieth century.
Among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia