St. Philotheos Leschinsky

Question: 

Can you please advise me of any biography, book or article on St Philotheos written in English or French, also when and by whom this great missionary was canonised. 

Dr. Alexander Roman alex@unicorne.org

I believe the book "Saints of the Northern Thebaid" contains a biography of this Siberian missionary, but please do check with whomever you would contact in regards to this volume.  Mention of him is also made in the book "A History of Christian Missions" by Stephen Neill.

An accomplished academic and tonsured monastic of the Kyivan Caves Lavra, Philotheus truly became the "Apostle of Siberia" given all the churches and "Chasovnia" (chapels where only the Horologion/Divine Office is celebrated) that he built and all the people that he reached.

The charge that Neill cites against him, namely, that he personally sometimes used financial rewards to entice Siberians to Orthodox Christianity is without foundation.  That the Russian imperial government looked favourably on such conversions and sometimes rewarded them is true, but this did not have anything to do with the sainted missionary himself.

St Philotheus was glorified together with the entire choir of All Saints of Siberia in the year 1977 (if my memory serves me correctly) and the Moscow Patriarchate published a beautiful icon of the Siberian Saints where he was also depicted (along with, we might add, the elder St Theodore Kuzmich who is said to have been none other than Tsar Alexander I, the conqueror of Napoleon).

An icon of him is also to be found in the great icon of "All Saints of Rus'" published by Jordanville Monastery in the right panel where he is among the locally venerated, but "not yet canonized" in the lower portion and he is the hierarch in the centre-right.

This is a "must have" icon!  Almost all of those in the "not yet canonized" section have been, by now, glorified as Saints, including the recently glorified St Anthony (Smirnitsky) of Voronezh who is also depicted there.

Ukrainian Orthodoxy