Eleutherius, secular name Dmitri Yakovlevich Bogoyavlensky (born 14 October 1870, 1868, or 1869 in Stary Oskol;[1] died 31 December 1940 in Vilnius), was a clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church.

[2] On 21 August 1911, his episcopal consecration took place at the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, presided over by Archbishop Sergius of Finland and Vyborg.

[4] There, on 24 May 1920, he attended a meeting with representatives of the Polish Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Enlightenment, who considered entrusting him with the administration of the Diocese of Chełm and Warsaw and, in the future, supporting efforts toward the autocephaly of the church in Poland.

As a result, in the first two years of his leadership, the archbishop had no influence over events in the parts of the diocese that remained within the borders of Kaunas Lithuania; all his activities up to 1923 focused on the affairs of the Orthodox Church in the Second Polish Republic.

Together with locum tenens of the Grodno Diocese, Vladimir, he proposed an amendment stating that the council of Polish bishops, if faced with issues under the patriarch's jurisdiction, could only act unanimously.

[9] Citing poor health, Archbishop Eleutherius did not attend the next bishops' assembly on 15 June 1922, which voted to request autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.

[11] In response, Archbishop Eleutherius convened a meeting of the clergy from his diocese in Vilnius, which on June 30 adopted a protest against the actions of Metropolitan George and other proponents of autocephaly, sending it to other canonical Orthodox Churches.

[12] Archbishop Eleutherius refused to pay the required contributions to support the church and even forbade priests in his diocese from praying for Metropolitan George during services.

[12] At the same time, the archbishop sought to revitalize parish life in the Vilnius region, which had diminished after the period of mass evacuation of Orthodox Christians.

When the nuns of this community lost their previous convent (confiscated by the authorities from the Visitation Sisters during the Tsarist period), he arranged for their temporary residence in the buildings of the dissolved men's Monastery of the Holy Trinity.

On 6 September 1922, a synod composed of three hierarchs – Metropolitan George, Archbishop Dionysius Waledyński, and Bishop Alexander Inozemtsev – deemed his actions "non-canonical, illegal, and anarchistic" and relieved him of the administration of the Vilnius Diocese.

[14] On 14 September 1922, Archbishop Eleutherius was detained immediately after celebrating the Divine Liturgy in the monastery Church of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius and spent three months at the Camaldolese Priory in Kraków.

Despite efforts to keep his internment secret, his situation came to light, sparking protests from Belarusian and Ukrainian minority deputies, as well as from the faithful of the Vilnius Diocese.

[21] His main focus, however, was the restoration of parish life, which had largely collapsed on Lithuanian territory after World War I due to the mass exodus of clergy and believers to Russia.

This dispute, centered on the degree of loyalty expected from Orthodox hierarchs outside the Soviet Union (particularly regarding the public acknowledgment of the Russian church's persecution), ultimately led to Metropolitan Eulogius' suspension from the clergy.

On 20 December 1939, Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow and Kolomna confirmed Eleutherius' authority to govern the entire Vilnius and Lithuanian diocese within its pre-1914 borders.