Presbyter
Saint Demetrius was born on October 22, 1879, in the village of Timonino, Bogorodsky district of Moscow province, in the family of deacon Feodor Blagoveshchensky. After finishing the spiritual school, he entered the Moscow Theological Seminary, where he studied for one year. On May 22, 1900, he was appointed as a psalmist at the Znamenskaya Church of the village of Ilyinskoye by Bishop Nestor of Dmitrov, and a year later he was ordained a subdeacon. From 1904 to 1906, while serving as a psalmist, he voluntarily held the position of assistant teacher at the Ilyinskaya parish school. On September 20, 1906, by the decree of Metropolitan Vladimir, he was transferred to the Voskresenskaya Church of the village of Ivoylovo to fill a diocesan vacancy and was ordained a deacon on October 20 of the same year. On January 1, 1931, he was appointed a priest.
Before his ordination, he married Pavla Vasilyevna and took in an orphan girl, Katya, born in 1910. After the revolution, Father Demetrius was arrested multiple times: in 1918, 1919, and 1928, and three times in 1931 for tax evasion. In 1929, his land allotment, cow, horse were confiscated, and his tax was doubled. In October 1931, he was sentenced to exile from the Moscow region. On April 10, 1932, he was arrested again on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and sent to the Volokolamsk prison.
During interrogations, he expressed dissatisfaction with the Soviet government and its policies, pointing out the violence with which the clergy were treated. On April 27, 1932, the judicial troika of the OGPU sentenced him to imprisonment in a labor camp for three years. He was sent to the OGPU camp in the Murmansk region. On December 15, 1932, he passed away in the 4th camp point of the city of Kemy and was buried in an unmarked grave.
