Arseny of Winnipeg

Archbishop Arseny (Chagovtsov, in the world Andrei Lvovich, 1866-1945) was a missionary in North America, founder of Saint Tikhon's Monastery in South Canaan and bishop of Winnipeg for Canada. He was called "the Chrysostom of Canada." He is venerated as a local saint in the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America, with commemoration on 21 September (4 October), without a canonization by the Synod of that Church.

Youth and priesthood in Russia

He was born on 10 (22) March 1866 in the village of Ogultsy, Valky district, Kharkov province, to the psalm-⁠reader Lev and Anna. Orphaned of his father, he was sent, as the eldest of five children, to the church school and then to the Kharkov seminary. He married in 1885 and had a son, Dionisy, later a holy martyr († 1937). He was ordained deacon in 1887 and priest in 1890 at Dergachi, where he was also a teacher of religion. After the death of his wife, in the 1890s, he wore iron chains and slept in an oak coffin, then set out through holy places, serving with Saint John of Kronstadt and meeting the elders of Valaam. In 1900 he received monastic tonsure with the name Arseny, in honour of Venerable Arseny of Konevets, and entered Kuryazh Monastery, where he was treasurer.

Mission in North America

In 1902, at the call of Archbishop Tikhon (Bellavin) of North America, he went as a missionary and reached the United States in January 1903. He served at West Troy and then at Mayfield, in Pennsylvania, among former Uniate Rusyns. On 15 July 1905 he founded, on an 82-acre farm at South Canaan, the Monastery of Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk, with an orphanage; more than a thousand believers walked sixteen kilometres to the first open-⁠air Liturgy. He was raised to hegumen in 1906.

In 1908 he was appointed dean and administrator of the Canadian mission, with his seat at Winnipeg, then at Edmonton. He began the newspaper "Canadian Field," whose sermons were praised by Tsar Nicholas II, and brought hundreds of former Uniates to Orthodoxy. In 1909 he was raised to archimandrite. A Uniate newspaper then fabricated a slander against him; the woman who was said to have borne him a child testified in court that she had been promised payment for the false accusation. Ill and exhausted, he asked in 1910 to return to Russia.

Return to Russia and exile

He then worked as diocesan missionary in Kharkov, as deputy head of the Byzyukov Monastery and its missionary seminary, as preacher to the army and, after the revolution, as chaplain of the White Army. In 1920 he went into exile in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where he served in parishes and monasteries in present-⁠day Macedonia.

Bishop in Canada

At the request of the Canadian faithful, the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad elected him bishop of Winnipeg, vicar of the diocese of North America. He was consecrated on 24 May (6 June) 1926 in Belgrade, with the blessing of the Serbian Patriarch Demetrius. Back in Canada, he found Orthodoxy divided among several jurisdictions, published the diocesan journal and visited the parishes ceaselessly, often two or three on a Sunday, hence the nickname "the flying bishop." He urged that politics be kept out of the Church and national chauvinism uprooted. He founded the Ascension Monastery at Sifton, with theological courses and an orphanage. In 1935, at a clergy meeting in Canora, a group armed with stones and clubs broke the windows and fired through the door of the house where the bishop was; he was gravely wounded in the leg, and illness forced him to leave Canada. In 1936 he was transferred to the diocese of Detroit and Cleveland.

Last years

He asked for retirement from 1938, with the right to live at Saint Tikhon's Monastery, where he was named deputy of the metropolitan and builder of the monastery. He was raised to archbishop in 1938 and on 24 October 1938 opened there the pastoral school, of which he was also rector, the beginning of Saint Tikhon's Seminary, with four students. He fell asleep in the Lord on 4 October 1945, at Scranton, Pennsylvania, remaining to the end a citizen of Canada.

Veneration

In September 2003 Saint Arseny Theological Institute was founded at Winnipeg. In October 2004 the Synod of the Orthodox Church in America created a commission to study his canonization. In Canada, with the blessing of Archbishop Seraphim of Ottawa, services, icons, a life and an akathist have been composed, and the day of commemoration has been set at 21 September (4 October).