Shio Batmanishvili

He was survivor of the Gulag at Solovki prison camp, and a martyr during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

[1][2] He initially exercised his ministry at Kutaisi and Akhaltsikhe, and from 1922 he was superior of the Servites of the Immaculate Conception's monastery at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Constantinople.

[1][2] On 16 October 1927, Batmanishvili was arrested in Tbilisi[1] and on 16 January 1928 he was sentenced to ten years of hard labor without the possibility of amnesty, under Articles 58-6 and 58-12 of the penal code of the RSFSR, and was sent to the Solovki prison camp, where he arrived on February 12.

[1][2] In July 1932, he was accused of anti-Soviet agitation, participating in secret liturgies and religious rituals, and transmitting information abroad on the persecution of Catholics in the USSR.

On 14 October 1937, he was sentenced to death by the Directorate of the NKVD[1] and executed on November 1, 1937 in Medvezhegorsk and buried at Sandormokh.