Presbyter
Saint Martyr Alexius Konstantinovich Benemansky was born on January 6, 1881, in the village of Baranya Gora, Tver Province. After graduating from the Theological Seminary, he worked as a teacher, and in 1904 he was ordained as a priest and served in the Tver Christ the Savior Women’s Monastery.
Despite prohibitions, he taught the Law of God. After the monastery was closed, he served in the church of the Icon of the Sorrowful Mother of God. In 1919, he was elected a member of the diocesan council. In 1920, he was arrested and sent to rear work. In 1922, during the campaign to confiscate church valuables, he was arrested again and sentenced to two years of exile in Turkestan.
In exile, he actively exposed the Renovationists and commemorated His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon. In 1924, he was released, returned to Tver, and continued the struggle against the Renovationists. He organized a library at the Sorrowful Church.
On March 2 (15), 1932, he was arrested again, and in July he was sentenced to exile in Kazakhstan for three years. After his exile, he returned to Tver but did not receive registration and went out of the clergy.
In 1937, he was arrested for the fourth time, accused of participating in a counter-revolutionary organization. On November 21 (December 4, new style), 1937, by the verdict of the NKVD, he was shot. The burial place is unknown.
On September 6 (19, new style), 1999, he was canonized as a locally revered saint of the Tver Diocese and was included in the ranks of the saints of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia for church-wide veneration in August 2000.
