Waymart, PA, May 31, 2019
Photo: stspress.com St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press has announced the release of a new volume in honor of His Eminence Metropolitan Leonty (Turkevich), the revered primate of the North American Metropolia from 1950 until his repose in 1965.
The 276-page The Life and Work of Metropolitan Leonty is the first comprehensive publication in English on the life and ministry of Met. Leonty. Edited by Dr. David Ford, professor of Church History at St. Tikhon’s Seminary, the volume presents a collection of scholarly presentations given at the symposium held in honor of the 50th anniversary of Met. Leonty’s repose at St. Tikhon’s in 2015, funeral eulogies, and testimonies from those who knew him, as well as pieces from his own extensive output, some newly translated into English.
In the words of His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon of Washington and All America and Canada, the book “His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon, “provides important glimpses into the life and heart of a true man of God, a prophet in the deepest sense of the word…. May we all receive even a small crumb from the bountiful table of his life.”
“Those who were blessed to have known Metropolitan Leonty in this earthly life remember him for the fruits of the Holy Spirit evident in him: humility, prayerfulness, meekness, dignity, kindness, generosity, forbearance, thoughtfulness, a sense of humor, vision, erudition, and wisdom. Some even consider him to be a saint. May the current and future generations of Orthodox believers in America be inspired by Metropolitan Leonty, the extraordinary hierarch to whom this book is devoted,” writes Dr. Alexis Liberovsky, archivist for the Orthodox Church in America.
Met. Leonty’s life and legacy has been the subject of research by the OCA’s Canonization Commission for several years. He is buried behind the altar of St. Tikhon’s Church at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in Waymart, PA.
The book can be ordered online or by contacting Fr. Mikel Hill at mikel.hill@stspress.com, or by phone: 888-454-6678.
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A short biography of Met. Leonty from the website of the Orthodox Church in America:
Photo: wikimedia.org Born in Volhynia on August 8, 1876, and ordained in 1905, Father Leonid Turkevich was appointed rector of the newly opened theological seminary and pastor of Saint Mary Church in Minneapolis, MN by Saint Archbishop Tikhon of the Aleutians and North America in August 1906. On October 27 of the same year, Father Leonid and his wife Anna arrived in Minnesota, where he immediately devoted himself to the formation of the future pastors for the North American flock and shepherding the parish that had been brought into Orthodoxy some 15 years earlier by Saint Alexis Toth.
Father Leonid’s bright intellect and strong ecclesiastical erudition, molded by his upbringing in a priestly family and schooling at the Kyiv Theological Academy, quickly brought him to the forefront of North American clergy. As one of Saint Tikhon’s closest advisors, he was elected chairman of the First All-American Sobor (Council), held in Mayfield, PA in 1907. At this and subsequent councils, his leadership guided the continuing formulation of the Church’s ongoing missionary vision in North America.
When the seminary was relocated to Tenafly, NJ in 1912, Father Leonid moved east, continuing his work at the seminary and eventually succeeding Saint Alexander Hotovitzky as dean of New York City’s Saint Nicholas Cathedral and editor of the American Orthodox Messenger, the Church’s official periodical.
Father Leonid was one of two priests selected to join Archbishop Evdokim in representing the North American Diocese at the All-Russian Church Council in Moscow in 1917-1918, at which he championed the restoration of the patriarchal system of Church governance abolished by Tsar Peter the Great two centuries earlier.
After the council, Father Leonid returned to America via Siberia, witnessing along the way the horrors the newly-established Bolshevik regime was inflicting on the Church and her faithful. Back in America, Father Leonid’s experiences at the Moscow Council clearly filled him with a vision and model for subsequent All-American Sobors and Church life.
When Father Leonid was widowed in 1925, elevation to the episcopacy was proposed to him almost immediately. Initially, he rejected this out of concern for the continued upbringing of his five children. But in 1933, he accepted monastic tonsure with the name Leonty, and was consecrated Bishop of Chicago. While he had been a hierarch for scarcely more than one year when the Fifth All-American Sobor was convened in November 1934 to elect a successor to the late Metropolitan Platon, many considered Bishop Leonty as the most viable candidate. However, when the sobor’s delegates debated the proper procedure for electing a Primate, Bishop Leonty suggested that they simply acknowledge the senior hierarch, Archbishop Theophilus, as Primate. To this suggestion, the delegates responded with a resounding cry of “Axios,” electing Archbishop Theophilus.
Until 1950, Bishop Leonty continued shepherding his Midwest flock, while serving as Metropolitan Theophilus’ foremost assistant in guiding the Church through World War II, a decade-long period of ecclesiastical synergy and peace with ROCOR, the reopening of theological seminaries in America, and a failed attempt of ending estrangement from the Church in Russia.
By the time Metropolitan Theophilus died in 1950, the clergy and faithful knew that only Archbishop Leonty could be the next Metropolitan of All America and Canada. Indeed, at the Eighth All-American Sobor in December 1950, he was elected Primate by a nearly unanimous vote. During his tenure, structure was given to the Church through the adoption of a governing Statute in 1955. With his blessing, the first English-language parishes were established; various pan-Orthodox initiatives, including the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas and the Orthodox Christian Education Commission, were undertaken; and preliminary steps were taken to the heal the rift with the Russian Church, ultimately paving the way to autocephaly for the Orthodox Church in America.
After 15 years of service as Primate, Metropolitan Leonty peacefully fell asleep in the Lord at his residence in Syosset (Oyster Bay Cove), NY, on May 14, 1965, and was interred at Saint Tikhon’s Monastery, South Canaan, PA. Those who were blessed to have known Metropolitan Leonty cherish his humility, prayerfulness, meekness, dignity, kindness, generosity, forbearance, thoughtfulness, sense of humor, vision, erudition and wisdom.
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