Presbyter
Saint Ilya was born in 1881 in the village of Rydomlya, Toloczyńskaya volost, Orsha district, Mogilev province. He graduated from the teacher's seminary. From 1906 to 1913, he served as a psalmist in the village of Khlebnoe. In 1914, he accepted the holy order and served in the villages of Usokhskaya Buda, Khlebnoe, and Blagovichi. In 1934, he moved to the Moscow region, where he was appointed to the Nikolskaya church of the village of Nikolskoye-Gagarino. In 1936, he was elevated to the rank of protopresbyter. On September 23, 1937, he was appointed to the Ilyinskaya church of the Ilyinskoye pogost. On October 30, 1937, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Taganka prison in Moscow. During the investigation, he denied his guilt, asserting that he did not conduct propaganda against the Soviet government. On November 19, 1937, the NKVD troika sentenced him to execution. Protopresbyter Ilya was shot on November 21, 1937, at the Butovo firing range and buried in an unknown common grave.
