1889–1937
An archimandrite of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra martyred in the Soviet persecution (1937)
The Holy New Hieromartyr Leo, Archimandrite of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra
Archimandrite Leo (in the world Leonid Mikhailovich Egorov) was a monk of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Petrograd who became a leading figure in the city's church life during the early Soviet years. A university-educated missionary, he helped found the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood and led pastoral and charitable work among workers and the poor before the Soviet authorities suppressed such activity.
Arrested repeatedly through the 1920s and early 1930s, he was finally sentenced to a labor camp and was shot in 1937 during the Soviet persecution of the Church. He was glorified as a hieromartyr by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2003 and is numbered among the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on September 7.
Established in 1919, the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood gathered clergy and laity around the Lavra for missionary and charitable work at a time when the Soviet state was moving to prohibit such activity. Archimandrite Leo was among its central figures, and the brotherhood's prominence made its members targets of repeated arrests through the 1920s and into the 1930s.
Across the 1920s and early 1930s Archimandrite Leo was arrested several times, exiled, and finally caught up in the mass arrest of brotherhood members in 1932. Sentenced to a long labor-camp term, he was held in the Siberian camp system until he was shot in 1937, one of many clergy and monastics put to death in that year of intensified persecution.
Among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia