Ambrose the Confessor, born Besarion Khelaia, was Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia during the first years of Soviet rule. He is remembered above all for defending the independence of the Georgian Church and for confessing the faith openly under persecution, for which he was tried, imprisoned, and ultimately venerated as a confessor. He is commemorated on March 16.
He was born in 1861 in Martvili, in western Georgia, and was educated at a theological school in Samegrelo before entering the Tbilisi Theological Seminary, from which he graduated and was ordained in 1885. He served for some years as a priest in Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast, where he taught the Georgian language and was active in philanthropic work. After the death of his wife in 1896, he pursued further studies at the Kazan Theological Academy, completing them in 1901 and receiving monastic tonsure with the name Ambrose.
Returning to Georgia, he was made archimandrite and served as abbot of the monasteries of Chelishi and, later, the Holy Transfiguration in Tbilisi. He was a scholar of Georgian church history and, according to the sources, recovered and restored old manuscripts during his time at Chelishi. His outspoken support for the restoration of the Georgian Church's autocephaly drew official suspicion, and in 1908 he was accused of complicity in the murder of the Russian exarch Nikon and exiled for a time to a monastery in Ryazan before being acquitted.
After the Georgian Church proclaimed the restoration of its autocephaly in 1917, Ambrose returned home and was consecrated a metropolitan. In 1921 he was elected and enthroned as Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, leading the Church as the Soviet authorities consolidated control over the country.
