Best known for his opposition to the Soviet regime, he was canonized in 1995 by the Georgian Orthodox Church as Saint Ambrosius the Confessor (ამბროსი აღმსარებელი, Ambrosi Aghmsarebeli).

He graduated from the Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1885 and was ordained to the priesthood in Abkhazia where he served as a priest in Sukhumi, New Athos, and Lykhny, and also delivered courses in the Georgian language.

Under the pseudonym of Amber, he published a series of articles denouncing the policy of Russification in Abkhazia and accusing local Russian officials of fomenting anti-Georgian sentiments among the Abkhaz people.

[1] In 1896, he enrolled into the Kazan Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1900, having authored a thesis, “the Struggle of Christianity against Islam in Georgia.” Tonsured a Hieromonk in 1901, he returned in Georgia where he was made an archimandrite at the Chelishi Monastery in the province of Racha.

The struggle culminated in 1908, when the Russian Exarch of Georgia, Archbishop Nikon, was murdered on 28 May at his residence in Tbilisi by unidentified assassins, allegedly by a Georgian nationalist.

[1] Although the Georgian autocephalist movement earned worldwide sympathies, the dispute dragged on indecisively for years, until the outbreak of World War I relegated it temporarily to the background.

Besides sending an appeal to the Genoa Conference, Ambrosi was also accused of concealing of the historic treasures of the Church in order to preserve them from passing into the hands of the Soviet state.

All the clerics arrested along with the Patriarch, showed their solidarity with Ambrosius, who assumed the entire responsibility for his acts, which he declared to have been in conformity with his obligations and with the tradition of the Church of Georgia.

In early March 1925 the Chairman of the All-Union Executive Committee, Mikhail Kalinin, visited Georgia and called for the amnesty of the participants of the August 1924 insurrection, and for the suspension of religious persecutions.