One could say that Leonid Feodorov died a martyr because he had two strongly held but unpopular beliefs. He believed that: 1) there is a God, and 2) the Church that Christ founded is the Catholic Church.
Leonid was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1879. His parents were members of the Orthodox Church, so he was raised as a Russian Orthodox. Despite a brief, youthful detour into a more worldly life (he later accused himself of reading too much popular literature), he soon recognized a priestly vocation and entered an Orthodox seminary in his native city. But that changed when he became a follower of the teachings of Vladimir Soloviev, a famous Russian philosopher who strongly promoted the reunification of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, seeing it as essential for the good of the Russian people.
Convinced of arguments in favor of Catholicism, Leonid left not only his seminary. He left his country. He traveled to Italy, became a Catholic in the Church of the Gesu (the Jesuit church in Rome) in 1902, and planned to become a Latin rite priest. Russia was still ruled by a czar at the time, but animosity toward Russians who converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism was so strong that Leonid had to study under a pseudonym to keep the Russian secret police from finding out.
However, Leonid realized that Russian Catholics needed Russian priests. With approval from the pope himself (although it caused a rift between Leonid and his Jesuit mentor), Leonid became a priest of the Byzantine rite, rather than the Latin rite, and was ordained into the Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church in 1911.
Two years later, he was able to return to St. Petersburg. However, Russia entered World War I soon after his return. Czar Nicholas II’s government considered Russian Orthodoxy to be the state religion, so Leonid was deemed a “revolutionary” and a threat to the state; he was exiled to Siberia.
The year 1917 was a tumultuous one for Russia. All political prisoners were released during the February Revolution, so Leonid was allowed to come back to St. Petersburg. The metropolitan of the Russian Catholic Church even appointed him exarch1 of the Russian Catholic Church.
But the new czar of Russia was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin. Since Communism rejects any belief in God, Lenin decreed an end to state support of the Orthodox Church in 1918 and refused to allow any church to own private property. While some Russians might have thought this would mean an end to the preferential treatment of the Orthodox Church and a more level playing field for all believers, they were wrong. For the next several years, Leonid and all Christian leaders not only faced persecution of their churches, but they were forced to find ways to help the Russian people, who were suffering bitterly under Lenin’s disastrous economic policies.
As Dr. Warren Carroll describes it, “By the beginning of the year 1921 Russia had endured six and a half years of the most profound and destructive upheaval any major Western nation has known in modern history.”2 The deaths of millions of Russian men in World War I, the instability caused by a civil war, and Communism’s destruction of the nation’s economy battered the entire country. The Russian people almost starved.
By 1922, all churches were ordered to surrender sacred objects—chalices, ciboria, all the objects of value used in the worship of God—to the state for “famine relief”. When Exarch Leonid, Archbishop Cieplak, and other Catholic priests refused, they were arrested and put on trial for “counter-revolutionary activities”.3
There were some western journalists present at their Moscow trial who reported on the proceedings. Everything about the trial—the fact that the judges were political appointees and had no legal training, the long, furious anti-religious speeches made by those conducting the trial, even the fact that the judges smoked heavily while sitting beneath “No Smoking” signs—showed that it was a farce. Exarch Leonid defended himself admirably and gave an eloquent testimony about the spirituality of the Russian people. When he was accused of abandoning starving people, he pointed out that Russian Catholics were currently feeding 120,000 children every day. In his final remarks, Leonid didn’t respond with anger or fear, but simply spoke of his sadness that Catholics were not being allowed freedom of conscience.
They were, of course, all found guilty. Archbishop Cieplak and a monsignor were executed. Leonid and all the other Catholic defendants were sentenced to ten years in prison. The prison camp to which they were sent, Solovki, had been the site of an Orthodox monastery near the White Sea before the Communists turned it into a prison for their political enemies. There is no shortage of books written about the hellish conditions of Solovki from its opening in 1923 until it was closed shortly before World War II; see Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, for example. In the brutal conditions of the camp, Leonid was at least initially allowed to offer Mass every other week, but when that was prohibited, he did so in secret.
Internationally, the obvious injustice of these show trials caused an uproar, so Leonid was released after only six years. He was forced to work making charcoal, later transferred to Ukraine, and died on March 7, 1935, worn out by his years of imprisonment. The Church has named him a martyr and a blessed.
It is unquestionable that both Orthodox and Catholic believers suffered great persecution under Communism in Russia. That’s why it was so poignant when Pope Saint John Paul II wrote his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, in which he called for those within the Catholic Church and the many Orthodox Churches to pray and consider ways to reunite us all into one visible Body of Christ. The pope particularly pointed out that our disunity is a true scandal to unbelievers. The fact that we are not one visible body makes it more difficult for unbelievers to trust us, to want to learn the truth of the Gospel, or to desire an encounter with Jesus Christ. How is that not a tragedy?
Would the history of Russia in the twentieth century be different if Soloviev’s vision of a united Church in Russia had come true at the beginning of the twentieth century? Would Communism have been able to control the lives of millions of Russians—and affect the millions of people who were forcibly absorbed into the Soviet Union?
On March 7, Blessed Leonid Feodorov’s feast day, we can remember his steadfast faithfulness to God and his heroic witness to the Catholic Church. We can also ask him to pray for Christian unity and for his beloved Russian people, who continue to suffer as long as Christ’s Church is divided.
Endnotes:
1 This title in the Orthodox Church corresponds to a bishop, just below the title of patriarch.
2 Warren H. Carroll, The Rise and the Fall of the Communist Revolution (Front Royal: Christendom Press, 1995), 151.
3 Exarch Leonid probably noticed the irony that he was condemned as a revolutionary by the czar and then as a counter-revolutionary by the Communists.
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Carl: I have greatly appreciated the standard of truth you display in your writings and in CWR. That is why I am baffled that you have not published my last two opinions. We are seeing the rise of a globalist machine that poses the greatest threat to the world since Hitler. For a very long time, Klaus and the WEC have cunningly and purposefully penetrated governments, the media, business, and education around the world to such an extent they control almost the entire narrative. They are ruthless liars. ask yourself why NATO wants to expand? I thought they weren’t supposed to be doing that The truth is they aren’t supposed to, they agreed to no expansion. The difference here is that instead of war, they do it politically and help with installing puppet governments. So, who is the actual evil one here?
Have you seen what happens to those who’ve tried to negotiate with these leftist globalizers now running NATO and most of the west? While hiding behind the veneer of a media-driven legitimacy, they are completely devoid of ANY morality, honesty, and truth. Theirs is the ruthless, relentless, and dishonest takedown of any entity that stands in their way. Ask Donald Trump. Ask parents at school boards. Ask The Little Sisters of the Poor. ASK YOURSELF. Ask history you yourself have printed… “By the beginning of the year 1921 Russia had endured six and a half years of the most profound and destructive upheaval any major Western nation has known in modern history.” The deaths of millions of Russian men in World War I, the instability caused by a civil war, and Communism’s destruction of the nation’s economy battered the entire country. The Russian people almost starved.
Putin is a bad man who does bad things, but that doesn’t mean Putin can’t also be right sometimes. In this case he is because they are indeed Nazis. How many lies do we have to see and swallow before we stand for the truth? The church went along with the narrative in WWII and has forever regretted it. You have the opportunity to be different this time. I BEG YOU TO DO SO. Tell us the truth about the reason the globalist instigators of this debacle are ignored while Putin ALONE is vilified.
Power is the only language they speak. THEY ALONE are the reason for this crisis. Putin is not going to unilaterally surrender to them as we did. Ukraine war…and even nuclear war if necessary, are his ONLY option. Just because he is a wicked even Stalin-like figure doesn’t mean he should give in to the globalist and their propaganda-driven agenda. They want a “great” reset all right. They want to take everything dear to God-fearing freedom-loving people and they are close to getting it.
Putin knows the score…and unlike our leaders, he intends to stand up to them EVEN if it takes the whole world down in the process. Patrick Henry said, “give me liberty or give me death”. A lot of people died because of those sentiments he expressed and acted on. Putin’s statements AND ACTIONS reflect the same total commitment…using his definition of liberty. I think he means it and your readers ought to be told why.
This is warped thinking. Someone needs to consult a psychiatrist. No doubt the wealthy globalists are a danger but to think Putin is somehow preferable is either madness or worse and to think his murderous invasion somehow advances a righteous cause is to ignore the little people whose lives and bodies are being blown apart right now. I understand why earlier posts were not published.
Perhaps our best bet to fight the evilness of Putin and the globalists is right here in America. God will bless those who choose His will and enact it with grace and fortitude. We in America are ready for God’s great awakening and not globalist Reset deception.