Leonid Ieronimovich Turkevich (Metropolitan Leonty) was a clergyman. He was the Metropolitan of the North American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1950 until his death in 1965.
Background
Leonid Ieronimovich Turkevich was born at Kremenets, in the Volhynian region of Russia (now Western Ukraine). His parents were Ieronim Iosifovich Turkevich, archpriest in Kremenets and assistant to the inspector of the Volhynian Theological Seminary, and Anna Antonovna Ivanitskaia. His mother died in 1879, leaving young Turkevich and his two brothers to a rigorous upbringing by their father.
Education
Turkevich attended elementary and intermediate schools in Kremenets, then completed his secondary education and theological studies at the Volhynian Theological Seminary (1889 - 1895) and the Kiev Theological Academy (1896 - 1900).
Career
After graduation he was given a series of lay assignments, including a teaching position in Kursk, in central Russia, and duties as assistant to the inspector of the theological seminary at Ekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk), in the Ukraine. In 1905, Turkevich was ordained at the monastery of Pochayev. Also in 1905, Leonid began his pastoral career as his father's successor as parish priest in Kremenets.
In 1906, Leonid was selected by Archbishop Tikhon of the American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church to be the dean (rector) of the first Russian Orthodox theological seminary in the United States, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1912 the seminary was transferred to Tenafly, New Jersey, and three years later Leonid was appointed dean and archpriest of St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City. He spent 1917-1918 in Russia, as the representative of the North American eparchy to the All-Russian Synod. Upon his return, by way of Siberia and Japan, he found that his church had been taken over by the "Renovated" faction of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was sympathetic to the Soviet regime. As a result, in 1926 Leonid moved his seat to what is now the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection in New York City.
In 1933, taking the monastic name of Leonty, he was consecrated bishop of Chicago and Minneapolis. He was raised to archbishop of New York and ruling bishop of the Council of Bishops in 1945. Following the death of Metropolitan Theophilus, the Eighth All-American Synod (the churchwide assembly of clergymen and laymen) unanimously elected him the new metropolitan on December 6, 1950. He was also president of St. Vladimir's Theological Seminary in Crestwood (Tuckahoe), New York.
Leonty devoted sixty years of his life to theological, especially biblical, scholarship and to the educational and administrative demands of his church.
From 1914 on, he edited a number of newspapers and periodicals, including American Orthodox Herald, the World, and Our Path, contributing many articles to them and to other Russian- and English-language religious publications. He was particularly preoccupied with the problems of Orthodoxy in America, increasingly distinct linguistically and ethnically from its Russian parent, and with its own peculiar mission. Recognizing the American church's great need for missionaries, Leonty nevertheless insisted that American priests be given a rigorous theological education, so that they might be scholars and intellectuals as well. He was sensitive to the need to have English used as the language of instruction and pedagogical literature, and was willing to make adjustments in the church to accommodate students who were not of Russian origin. But he was determined to maintain the "Russian" character of the church as long as possible. Leonty showed the same ability to couple faithfulness to tradition with receptivity to change in his approach to the problems posed for the American church by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Deprived of material support from Russia, he had to find the means to make his church self-supporting financially. Equally important, after 1923, he had to counter the attempt of the Soviet-backed "Living Church" to extend its influence and control to America. Adamantly opposed to any compromise with the Soviet regime and with Communist ideology, Leonty insisted on the complete autonomy of the American church, and gave it its own independent administrative structure. At the same time he emphasized the continuing love and loyalty of the American "daughter" for her spiritual and historical "mother, " now unable to express and execute her own will. He was a skillful and resolute leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in America during a period of crisis and transition. He died in Syosset, New York.
Achievements
Connections
In 1905, Turkevich married the daughter of another priest, Anna Olimpievna Chervinskaia (Anna Chervinsky). They had five children.