Moscow, November 15, 2024
Photo: oca.org Early diaries of His Eminence Metropolitan Leonty (Turkevich), primate of the American Metropolita (the precursor to the Orthodox Church in America), have been published in Russia.
The new publication presents his diaries of 1917-1918, when he was a delegate of the American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Moscow Church Council at which St. Tikhon was ultimately chosen to be the first Patriarch of the Russian Church in 200 years, reports the Orthodox Church in America.
Met. Leonty, who is regarded by many as a saint, was still a priest at the time of the Council, known as Fr. Leonid. Based on his experience of mission work in America, Fr. Leonid made a passionate plea at the Council for the restoration of the Patriarchate.
The diaries also present “a dramatic chronicle of his time in Russia in the throes of Revolutionary conflict and his long, treacherous and arduous travel back to America through Siberia and Japan,” as well as his travels to his native places in what is today Ukraine.
The 587-page volume is printed in the original Russian, featuring a foreword by His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon of Washington and All America and Canada. The current OCA primate writes: “The contents of these diaries show to us that the light of faith in Christ enlightens every person with whom it comes into contact.”
The book is available for purchase here.
In 2019, St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press published The Life and Work of Metropolitan Leonty.
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