Leonid Turkevich was born on August 8, 1876 in Kremenetz, Volhynia (at the time, part of the Russian Empire, now in Ukraine). He was the second son of Archpriest Jerome (Ieronim) Turkevich and his wife, Anna. She fell asleep in the Lord just three years after Leonid’s birth. Fr. Jerome raised his three sons, all of whom would receive theological formation and would go on to serve the Church - theirs becoming the seventh successive priestly generation in the Turkevich family. Metropolitan Leonty’s eldest son, John, would continue this succession trend to an eighth generation when he was ordained after his father’s repose. Leonid’s older brother, Benedict (1873-1928), served the Church in America as a choir director and priest for more than a decade (1898-1912). Their younger brother, Hilarion, served briefly as a missionary in China, but died at a young age in 1904.
After studying at a parochial school for children of clergy and subsequently graduating from the Volhynia Seminary in 1895, Leonid Turkevich was admitted to the Kyiv Theological Academy in 1896. It is noteworthy that Archimandrite Platon (Rozhdestvensky) was a member of the Academy’s faculty at the time. Father Leonid Turkevich would later serve under him in America for many years as a priest, trusted advisor and, finally, as a bishop. Upon completion of a thesis on the exegesis of the Prophet Habakkuk, Leonid Turkevich was granted the degree of Candidate of Theology in 1900. As the recipient of a state scholarship, he was obligated to serve for six years in the Church’s educational system, an obligation he fulfilled through a series of teaching appointments in various ecclesiastical schools.
1905 was an eventful year in Leonid Turkevich’s life: he was raised to the rank of Titular Councilor, which was the ninth grade of public servant in Imperial Russia, and he married Anna Olympievna Chervinsky, the daughter of a priest. On September 26 and 28, Leonid was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood at the venerable Pochaev Lavra by Bishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Volhynia – later, the founding First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). The newly-ordained Fr. Leonid was assigned as second priest of St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kremenetz and was appointed to teach catechism in the city’s schools. During this period, he contemplated requesting assignment as a missionary in Urmia (Persia).
Instead, on August 7, 1906, at the request of Archbishop Tikhon of the Aleutians and North America and by decision of the Holy Synod of the Church of Russia, Fr. Leonid was appointed Rector of the fledgling seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota and from 1907; he was concurrently also Rector of Holy Virgin Protection (St. Mary’s) Church in the same city. In 1909, he would be confirmed as Rector of the Seminary. It was at this parish fifteen years earlier that Father (now Saint) Alexis Toth brought his Greek Catholic parish of emigres from Austro-Hungary back to the Orthodox faith of their ancestors. This inaugurated a mass movement - involving more than a hundred parishes and thousands of Austro-Hungarian Slavs in the Midwest and Northeastern US - to Orthodoxy under the leadership of Saint Alexis. Here in Minneapolis in 1897, a Missionary School had been established, which in 1905 was upgraded to become the new North American Orthodox Seminary, while the operations of the Missionary School were transferred to Cleveland, Ohio.
On October 27, Fr. Leonid and his wife Anna reached the place of their new assignment and Fr. Leonid began his work in earnest, devoting himself to the formation of the future pastors of the North American flock and, soon, also, to shepherding the parish community. His bright intellect and erudition, molded by his upbringing in a priestly family and studies at the Kyiv Theological Academy, quickly brought him to the forefront of North American clergy. He was one of St. Tikhon’s closest advisors and just four months after arriving in America, he was elected chairman of the First All-American Sobor, held in February 1907 in Mayfield, Pennsylvania. St. Alexander Hotovitzky was originally selected, but could not accept the position, as he was too busy with duties at the convention of the Russian Orthodox Catholic Mutual Aid Society (ROCMAS), which was taking place concurrently with the Sobor. In fact, the sessions of the Sobor were scheduled between sessions of the Convention. Therefore, Fr. Leonid guided the Council’s work as its chairman, while St. Alexander served as secretary.
At this and subsequent All-American Sobors, it was his leadership and guiding voice that helped the Church to navigate stormy waters, holding fast to the vision of Saints Innocent and Tikhon for the Church’s mission in North America.
When the seminary relocated from Minneapolis to Tenafly, NJ in 1912, Fr. Leonid continued as rector of the Seminary until 1915, when he succeeded Saint Alexander Hotovitzky, as both Dean of the New York City Cathedral, on the latter’s return to Russia, and as Editor of the American Orthodox Messenger (Vestnik), the Church’s official periodical. He would continue serving in these positions until his elevation to the episcopacy in 1933.
In June 1917, before convocation of the All-Russian Church Council had been formalized, Fr. Leonid was delegated to travel to Russia to submit reports on the organization of parishes and the status of theological education in America. Meanwhile, clergy and lay delegates were chosen by the North American Diocese to attend the All-Russian Church Council in Moscow. Due to wartime circumstances, they were prevented from traveling to Russia, although the clergy delegate, Fr. Alexander Kukulevsky, did manage to arrive eventually in Moscow with much delay. As Fr. Leonid was still in Moscow, he began to attend sessions of the council that began in the second half of August. In an extraordinary measure, upon the insistence of Archbishop Evdokim (Meschersky), the diocesan hierarch of North America, the Council granted Fr. Leonid full delegate status, after he had been participating in council sessions for nearly a month, to replace the diocesan lay delegate who was unable to attend.
The Moscow Council was an unprecedented gathering in Russia of hierarchs and elected clergy and lay representatives, just as the First All-American Sobor had been in America a decade earlier. There had not been a church-wide council in Russia in nearly two and a half centuries. After Czar Peter the Great had abolished the patriarchate two centuries earlier, the Church was governed by the Most Holy Synod, which functioned like a state bureaucracy, leading to a stagnation in church life. However, in the late 19th and early 20th century, a rejuvenation of theological thought and church life in Russia began. An All-Russian Church Council was projected, which would bring together hierarchs, clergy and laity, to deliberate the most crucial issues of church life. For a variety of reasons, the Council was able to convene only after the fall of Czarist regime, during the brief tenure of the Provisional Government. Among the many issues before the Council, the foremost was the possible restoration of the Patriarchate, which engendered intense debate during the Council. In the course of these deliberations, Fr. Leonid delivered a speech in which he argued vehemently in support of the restoration of the Patriarchal system of church governance. His arguments were based on his experience that the Russian Church’s missionary efforts abroad were being hindered by the general perception that the Church’s ties to the Russian state and the state’s political goals were too strong. Therefore, he advocated for a Patriarch at the head of the Church who would ensure the ecclesial character of the Church’s mission and thereby enhance the Church’s credibility.
As a participant in both the First All-American Sobor and the All-Russian Council a decade later, Fr. Leonid was a connection between the two. After the Mayfield Sobor, Fr. Leonid was involved in the drafting of The Normal Statute for Parishes of the North American Diocese, which was issued in 1909 in fulfillment of a decision of the Sobor. This document may have had some influence over the drafting of the Parish Statute for the entire Russian Church adopted at the Moscow Council of 1917-18.
After participating in the All-Russian Council, Fr. Leonid returned to America via Japan, having traversed Siberia where he witnessed the horrors that the newly-established Bolshevik regime was inflicting upon the Church and the people of Russia. The situation in Russia would soon create dire consequences for the Church in North America, also. Communication between the North American Church and Church authorities in Russia became extremely difficult and even impossible. Archbishop Evdokim, the ruling hierarch of North America, who had gone to Moscow to participate in the church council, was unable to return to America. In his absence, he had designated Bishop Alexander (Nemolovsky), the senior auxiliary, to temporarily administer the diocese. The North American Church now faced an ever-deepening crisis. There was no longer any crucial guidance forthcoming from Russia and the funding from Russia, which until that point to a large degree had financed the North American Church, ceased. In his priestly ministry in various settings at this difficult time, Fr. Leonid showed great pastoral sensitivity and acumen.
A major aspect of Fr. Leonid’s work and vision was for the Church at large, in the councils. Having experienced sobornost firsthand in the joint conciliar action of hierarchs, clergy and laity addressing the Church’s crucial issues of governance and ministry at the Moscow Church Council of 1917-18, he sought to foster this conciliar spirit in the life of the Church in America, particularly through the All-American Sobors. Due to the critical situation of the Church in America at the time as a result of being cut off from the Church in Russia, there were three Sobors held in quick succession in 1919, 1922 and 1924. The 4th All-American Sobor in 1924 declared the Church in America to be temporarily self-governing until such time as normal relations could be reestablished with the Church in Russia. Fr. Leonid was the key figure in drafting the documents adopted at the 4th All-American Sobor. For his far-sighted ecclesial vision, he was acknowledged as the “soul” of the 4th Sobor.
As Dean of Saint Nicholas Cathedral in the 1920s, he was confronted with litigation over the cathedral property by schismatic “Archbishop” John Kedrovsky of the so-called Living Church. When the courts, at one point, granted the cathedral property to Kedrovsky, Fr. Turkevich, in his abiding concern for preserving the Church’s historical legacy, took numerous priceless archival documents with him as he hastily complied with the order to vacate. These documents are now preserved in the Archives of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). It is therefore to him that we owe the beginnings of the OCA Archives. Throughout his life, he had an abiding concern for preserving the church’s historical legacy and archival documentation.
Following Matushka Anna’s death from tuberculosis in 1925, elevation to the episcopacy was almost immediately proposed to him, but he rejected it initially out of commitment to the continued upbringing of his five children. Eventually, in 1933, Fr. Leonid accepted monastic tonsure with the name Leonty and was consecrated Bishop of Chicago and Minneapolis on July 10 of that year. When Metropolitan Platon reposed the following year and the 5th All-American Sobor convened to elect his successor in November 1934, Bishop Leonty was widely viewed as a leading candidate for the primacy though a hierarch for just over a year. At that time, the Church did not have an established procedure for the election of its Metropolitan. At the Council, there was extensive debate on how the Metropolitan should be elected. In order to lead the Sobor delegates, who were caught in an impasse over electoral procedure, to a resolution, Bishop Leonty, with characteristic humility, proposed that the Sobor should simply acknowledge the senior hierarch, Archbishop Theophilus (Pashkovsky) as Primate of the North American Church. The delegates concurred with a resounding “Axios”.
Until 1950, Bishop Leonty continued to shepherd the Orthodox flock in the Midwest, where he developed the diocesan structure. He was Metropolitan Theophilus’ foremost assistant in guiding the North American Church through a period that included World War II, a decade-long period of ecclesiastical synergy and peace with ROCOR, and a failed attempt at ending estrangement from the Church in Russia. He was a leading advocate at the 6th All-American Sobor in 1937 for the reinstitution of theological schools in the American Metropolia after nearly 15 years without one. In fact, when St. Vladimir’s Seminary and St. Tikhon’s Pastoral School (later Seminary) opened the following year, the establishment of a third theological school in Chicago was also originally projected but proved unfeasible. Reprising his role as an educator, he would lecture at the seminaries and, from 1955 to 1962, would serve as Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary. He oversaw planning of celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Orthodoxy in North America in 1944 and edited two historical volumes published for the jubilee. In 1945, he was elevated to the rank of Archbishop.
When Metropolitan Theophilus died in 1950, Archbishop Leonty was elected Locum Tenens of the Primatial See of the North American Metropolia. In that capacity, he delivered a memorable address, which opened the 8th All-American Sobor in December 1950 in which he highlighted the Church’s ongoing growth “from council to council.” He also noted the recent granting of spiritual protection by the Metropolia to communities in Japan and South America. He affirmed the necessity of the Church’s continued autonomous existence, especially in view of the failed attempt at reconciliation with the Moscow Patriarchate due to the impossibility of accepting dictates from the Russian Church while it was controlled by a totalitarian regime. While acknowledging the spiritual ties that bind the American Church to Her Mother Russian Church and Her Grandmother Greek Church, he stressed that Divine Providence had rooted the Church in America and Her mission is to be a united, self-governing Church for all Orthodox Christians in North America, as envisioned by St. Tikhon. In spite of an agonizing break with ROCOR four years earlier, he welcomed ROCOR’s administration, which had just moved its headquarters to New York from Europe, to its new home in America, and called for brotherly collaboration in building up Church unity and ministering together to the American flock. In the following years, he would personally maintain ongoing fraternal contact with Metropolitan Anastassy, First Hierarch of ROCOR.
At the 8th Sobor, it was clear that one hierarch stood far above the others in leadership qualities and in the length, breadth and depth of his experience in the Church in North America. Indeed, when the primatial election took place on December 6, 1950, the second day of the Sobor, the clergy and lay delegates voted nearly unanimously for Archbishop Leonty of Chicago and Minneapolis as Primate, and the vote was immediately confirmed by the canonical election of Metropolitan Leonty by the Great Council of Bishops.
Always vigilant to maintain church order and proper administrative structure, Metropolitan Leonty had been closely involved in the process of formulating various regulations, bylaws and statutes for the Church from the time of 1st All-American Sobor in 1907. Under his primatial leadership, this culminated in the adoption at the 9th All-American Sobor in 1955 of a comprehensive governing statute, which had been in preparation for decades. After the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America, the Statute adopted in 1955 became the basis for the OCA Statutes adopted in 1971 and 2015. With Metropolitan Leonty’s blessing, English-language parishes began to be established and, with his full support, various pan-Orthodox initiatives such as the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) and the Orthodox Christian Education Commission (OCEC) were undertaken. In 1952, Metropolitan Leonty consecrated Holy Chrism at his cathedral in New York for the pastoral needs of the North American Metropolia, the only time this was done by the North American Church before the granting of autocephaly to the OCA in 1970.
Following the failed attempt at reconciliation with the Moscow Patriarchate in 1947, Metropolitan Leonty and all the hierarchs of the Metropolia were considered to be under suspension by the Patriarchate. In 1963, a door was cracked open when Metropolitan Leonty received with brotherly love Archbishop Nikodim (Rotov) of Yaroslavl, a hierarch of the Moscow Patriarchate.
This gesture proved to be a key preliminary step toward healing the Metropolia’s painful separation from the Russian Church and would lead to dialogue and eventually, several years later, to official negotiations, culminating in the granting of autocephaly by the Russian Church to the Orthodox Church in America in 1970. Although Metropolitan Leonty did not live to see autocephaly granted, his eldest son, Father John Turkevich, was a member of the OCA delegation that received the Tomos of Autocephaly in Moscow in 1970.
After nearly 60 years of service, including 15 as Primate, to the Church in America during a period fraught with division and dissension, a situation most painful to the peaceful hierarch and contrary to the vision to which he held fast of “one flock, one shepherd”, one united Orthodox Church in North America, Metropolitan Leonty reposed peacefully in the Lord at Westwood, his residence in Syosset (Oyster Bay Cove), NY, on May 14, 1965. He was buried at St. Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan, PA.
Throughout his life, he wrote extensively, particularly articles for church periodicals and sermons on a broad spectrum of topics. He also composed thousands of poems on diverse subjects, from feast days, to memorial tributes, to places he visited, to literature, to biblical themes.
Unfortunately, little of his writing has been translated into English. The most notable publications available in English are an insightful report on Theological Education in America written in 1913, and a small book entitled “Essays of Orthodox Theology” published in 1918, containing a collection of his articles previously published in non-Orthodox periodicals.
Metropolitan Leonty’s legacy is also preserved in the OCA Archives, which are the inactive official records of the church administration. Alongside these official records, Metropolitan Leonty’s personal papers are the largest of the 100 collections in the manuscript division of the OCA Archives. This collection consists of some 100 archival boxes, more than 50 cubic feet. Additional papers and Metropolitan Leonty’s bound diaries were donated by his family to the Library of Congress.
Among the various honors he was accorded most notable are: the Imperial Order of Saint Anna, 2nd degree, in 1912; an honorary doctorate from Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, France in 1953; and, in 1957 on the occasion of his 50 years of Church service in North America, the right, granted by the Metropolia’s Great Council of Bishops, to be preceded by a processional cross and to wear a second panagia, honors usually reserved for the Primate of an autocephalous Church.
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.