Martyr Gavriil Gavrilovich Bezfamiliy was born in 1880 in the city of Kolomna, Moscow Province, into a petty-bourgeois family. He completed school, worked as a plumber, and served in a church. In 1922, he was convicted of “the theft of state or public property committed by robbery” and was sentenced to three years (suspended). In 1924, he moved to the village of Yaropolets in the Volokolamsk district and worked as a “seller of church items” in the church of the village of Teryaeva Sloboda.
Gavriil Gavrilovich was arrested on November 10, 1937, accused of conducting anti-Soviet and counterrevolutionary agitation, distributing church literature among schoolchildren, and actively preaching in church among children. During interrogations, he admitted that he had sold two memorial books to believers, but firmly denied anti-Soviet agitation. He was tried in a group case together with clergy of the Ascension Church and was sentenced to death. He was executed on November 27, 1937, at the Butovo firing range near Moscow and buried in an unmarked mass grave.
He was glorified among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in August 2000 at the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.
