Pietro Leoni (1 January 1909 – 26 July 1995) was an Italian priest of the Society of Jesus and the Russian Greek Catholic Church.
After briefly teaching there as an in residence philosophy tutor, Leoni applied to permanently join the Russian Apostolate and was ordained in 1939 as a priest of the Byzantine Rite.
Leoni was drafted into the Italian Royal Army and served as a military chaplain in Albania and Occupied Greece.
Leoni was granted an audience with Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
He later recalled, "I told Szeptycki about the condition of the Catholic and Orthodox religions in the Ukraine and about the attitude of the German authorities to the clergy.
"[5] In 1943 he was released from military service as the Italian army disintegrated and he decided to stay on as a missionary priest in Romanian-occupied Odessa.
Leoni was at first allowed, despite the stiff opposition of the Moscow Patriarchate's Eparchy of Odessa, to remain in the city and continue to minister to local Catholics.
[7] Even though Soviet anti-religious legislation strictly forbade the registration of foreign priests and even though the NKVD already had a file on him, Fr.
Leoni offered only the Byzantine Rite Divine Liturgy in Old Church Slavonic and preached in Russian.
Leoni refused to answer questions that might harm the Church or other underground priests, such as his former classmate Walter Ciszek.
Leoni's, "sometimes flippant answers earned him spells in solitary confinement, but surprisingly he was not tortured, or at least he does not mention it.
I have never calumniated the Soviet Government: I have only said what I believe without mincing my words..."[13] When NKVD interrogators confronted him with "witnesses" who claimed that he was a supporter of Fascist dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Fr.
He was declared guilty of espionage on behalf of the Vatican, anti-Soviet agitation, and of trying to convert the Orthodox to the Eastern Catholic Churches.
Leoni later recalled of the transit prison in Kirov, "Bed-bugs and roaches multiplied by the millions and at night it was impossible to defend one's self against them because the room was in total darkness.
Leoni was again arrested on June 15, 1947, and accused of, "belonging to a counterrevolutionary organisation" of fellow political prisoners which interrogators dubbed "Volya" ("The Will").
According to investigators, "Volya" was planning a prisoner uprising, was smuggling letters to Western Governments, and also trying to tunnel out of the camp.
Leoni's memoirs and the investigative file, however, reveal that "Volya" was created and organized by an NKVD agent provocateur named Goryachev.
Leoni guilty of violating article 58 of the Russian Criminal Code and another 25 years in Rechlag were added to his sentence.
"[23] According to Memorial member and historian of Soviet religious persecution Irina Osipova, "Many of his 'outbursts' against the camp administration are not mentioned in his person dossier, but are described by his associates in their memoirs".
Leoni in Vorkuta, later recalled how a KGB Lieutenant-Colonel arrived in the camp during the summer of 1953 to deliver a lecture on "Soviet humanism".
"[24] At first a fellow prisoner sarcastically heckled the visitor, saying, "Citizen Commandant, you said that the Soviet authorities have already freed millions and that's only a small percentage of those who will be released.
Then "Per Leoni", as his fellow zeks called him,[25] stood up and shouted in flawless Russian, "Don't believe the Chekist liars!
[27] Fellow political prisoner Jan Urwich later wrote about how, in 1955, a delegation from Moscow arrived at the labor camp to collect signatures for the Stockholm Appeal, in which the Cominform-controlled World Peace Council had called for a global ban on nuclear weapons.
A lecturer first made a speech calling for signatures and the KGB officer chairing the meeting urged any prisoner who wished to speak in favor of the appeal to do so.
This man made us feel confident that he would tell that Free World, to which he was returning, the tragic and incredible truth about the country the champions of Humanism and the brotherhood of peoples.
Leoni, who believed the Moscow Patriarchate to be "a mere instrument of the Atheist State", openly heckled Fr.
Leoni responded to recent efforts since the Quiet Revolution by feminists to pass legislation aimed against workers at Catholic hospitals by giving an interview over Canadian radio, "in which he clearly and unambiguously defended", the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on human sexuality.
[31][30] Following his death, the Russian Catholic parish of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in Jerusalem was closed down permanently by Fr.