Leonid Feodorov

[1] His father, Ivan Feodorovich Feodorov, was the son of a former State serf from Yaroslavl Governorate and had become the owner of the Malii Yaroslaviets, a highly successful St. Petersburg restaurant, which was one of the centers of the Imperial capital's artistic, literary, and intellectual ferment during the Silver Age.

Although she also attempted to raise her son as a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church, she simultaneously encouraged him to read the popular novelists of the day.

"[10] After much soul-searching, Feodorv decided to leave his studies in the summer of 1902 and travel to Rome in order to convert to the Roman Catholic Church.

In order to interrupt his studies and be granted a passport necessary for foreign travel, Feodorov needed the permission of the Academy Inspector, Archimandrite Theofan (Bystrov), who responded, "I know very well why you wish to go to Italy...

Jan Szyslawski, traveled to Rome by way of Austrian-ruled Lviv, where Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church blessed his mission.

In the aftermath, he began studying at the Jesuit seminary at Anagni under the pseudonym of "Leonidas Pierre," which was meant to keep the Tsar's secret police, or Okhrana, off his trail.

[5] In a conversation with a fellow seminarian at Agnani, Feodorov predicted, "Russia will not repent without travelling the Red Sea of the blood of her martyrs and numerous sufferings of her apostles.

[15] On March 25, 1911, he received ordination as a Byzantine Rite priest by Metropolitan Michael Mirov in Holy Trinity parish of the Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church in the Galata neighborhood of Constantinople.

[16][17] He spent the following years as a hieromonk of the Ukrainian Studite Monks at Kamenica (existing 1908–1924), near Čelinac in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where his spiritual formation was supervised by a Greek Catholic Starets named "Elder Josaphat.

[18] On the eve of the First World War, he returned to Saint Petersburg whereupon he was immediately exiled to Tobolsk in Siberia as a potential threat to the Tsar's government which held Russian Orthodoxy as its state religion.

When both the Exarch Leonid and the Latin Rite Archbishop Jan Cieplak refused to permit this, all Catholic parishes were forcibly closed by the State.

In the spring of 1923, Exarch Leonid, Archbishop Cieplak, Monsignor Konstanty Budkiewicz, and fourteen other Catholic priests and one layman were summoned to a Moscow trial before the revolutionary tribunal for counter-revolutionary activities and anti-Soviet agitation.

Normal judicial procedures did not restrict revolutionary tribunals at all; in fact, the prosecutor N.V. Krylenko, stated that the courts could trample upon the rights of classes other than the proletariat.

Western observers found the setting -- the grand ballroom of a former Noblemen's Club, with painted cherubs on the ceiling -- singularly inappropriate for such a solemn event.

"[23]New York Herald correspondent Francis McCullagh, who was present at the trial, later described its fourth day as follows: Krylenko, who began to speak at 6:10 PM, was moderate enough at first, but quickly launched into an attack on religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.

During a conversation inside the anti-religious museum at Solovki with fellow Russian Greek Catholic political prisoner Julia Danzas, the Exarch revealed that felt profoundly moved to be incarcerated in the former monastery complex once led by St. Philip of Moscow.

"[27] According to Deacon Vasili von Burman, "At that time, when the camp seemed a spiritual desert, a place of depression and even despair, the Catholic priests led a fruitful life in their closed circle...

In the context of existence on Solovki this stood out with particular clarity... On Sundays and Feast Days, services were held in the Germanovsky chapel and it was, for all its poverty, a place of celebration.

"[28] In response, however, to escalating diplomatic protests and publicity given to religious persecution in the USSR by the Holy See, the Chekist guards on Solovki cracked down on the Catholic prisoners with a vengeance.

[16] Following his return to the United States following the 1923 Cieplak show trial, Fr Edmund A. Walsh commissioned a painting of Exarch Leonid from Russian refugee artist Paul Maltzev.

Walsh's office at Georgetown University for the rest of his life and he always spoke of the first Exarch of the Russian Greek Catholic Church with a deep sense of reverence.

[30] Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said, "We expect that the exarch [Leonid Feodoriv] is on the road to glorification through beatification.

[31] On 27 June 2001, Exarch Leonid Feodorov was beatified during a Byzantine Rite Divine Liturgy in Lviv, Ukraine by Pope John Paul II.