(1873 - 1937) – Priest, Holy Martyr
Commemoration day: December 2 (November 19 O.S.) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
Ignatius Stepanovich Teslin was born in 1873 in the village of Studenets, Syzran Uyezd, Simbirsk Governorate. He graduated from a theological seminary.
He was ordained as a priest in 1916.
In 1930, he was briefly arrested by the OGPU in the city of Syzran. After his release, he moved to Moscow.
On December 15, 1934, he was arrested on charges of sympathizing with the murder of Kirov. He was held in Butyrka prison and did not plead guilty.
On February 10, 1935, a special meeting of the NKVD sentenced him to 3 years of exile in Kazakhstan for "counter-revolutionary activities." He lived in the village of Mayskoye, Beskaragai District, Pavlodar Region, and worked as a laborer at the Mayskoye mine.
On November 25, 1937, he was arrested again on charges of "conducting counter-revolutionary work together with other religious servants." He did not plead guilty.
On December 1, 1937, the NKVD troika of the East Kazakhstan Region sentenced him to death by shooting.
He was buried in an unmarked grave.
He was glorified by the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.
Saints of Kazakhstan
