Leonid Antoshchenko

Saint Leonid (in the world Lavrenty Evtikhievich Antoshchenko), hieromartyr, was Bishop of Mari and vicar of the Gorky diocese. A monk of the Russian tradition and a builder of churches, he passed through camp and exile and was shot at Yoshkar-⁠Ola on 7 January 1938. He is commemorated on 26 December (8 January).

Youth and monastic life

He was born on 6 August 1872 in the village of Malaya Nikolaevka, in the Bakhmut district of Yekaterinoslav province (today in the Donetsk region of Ukraine), to a peasant family. At sixteen he entered a monastery. He was tonsured at the Holy Trinity Lavra of Saint Sergius (according to other sources, at the Chudov Monastery in Moscow). After his ordination as hieromonk he served as treasurer of the Chudov Monastery.

From 1908 (some sources say 1910) he headed the Saint Petersburg metochion of the Peking Mission. There he built the church of the Nativity of Christ (1911-1913) and served in it until 1927. He received a pectoral cross in 1913 and was raised to archimandrite in 1919. During the First World War he was entrusted with building a church in Harbin, but the revolution halted the work. In 1922 he was arrested for a month by the Cheka, and he lived in Leningrad until the summer of 1927.

Episcopate and persecution

On 26 June 1927 he was consecrated Bishop of Pereslavl, vicar of the Vladimir diocese. On 1 February 1930 he was arrested and sentenced by the OGPU collegium to five years of imprisonment, and sent to the Pinyug camps in the Kirov region. He worked on the railway embankment between Pinyug and Syktyvkar, work done by hand with shovels and wheelbarrows, with prisoners working lightly clothed even in severe frost. In the camp he gave spiritual care to the Christians there, hearing confessions and giving communion with Holy Gifts sent from Moscow by Archbishop Bartholomew (Remov), and he tonsured the future Archimandrite Sergius (Savelyev).

From September 1932 he was named Bishop of Alexandrov, vicar of the Vladimir diocese, but already on 3 April 1932 he had been arrested and exiled to Balakhna. In 1933 he was moved in exile to Sengilei near Ulyanovsk, and on 10 December 1934 he was released. On 17 January 1935 he was appointed Bishop of Kungur, vicar of the Perm diocese, and then to Sverdlovsk, but the authorities did not allow him to take up these sees.

Bishop of Mari and martyrdom

From March 1937 he was Bishop of Mari. Archimandrite Sergius recalled that, as he left for his new post, the bishop blessed those seeing him off from the train window and prophetically pointed to his chest and to the ground. He lived beside the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Semyonovka, near Yoshkar-⁠Ola.

On 21 December 1937 he was arrested and held in the Yoshkar-⁠Ola prison, accused of counter-⁠revolutionary activity and of founding a "church fascist organization". He admitted no guilt. On 29 December 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and the sentence was carried out on 7 January 1938.

Glorification

By decision of the Holy Synod of 17 July 2002, Bishop Leonid's name was included in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the twentieth century, together with other clergy of the Mari land. In 2008 a monument to him was erected in Obolensky-⁠Nogotkov Square in Yoshkar-⁠Ola and consecrated on 1 July. On 5 June 2014 a new church in his honour was consecrated in the city prison.