Leontiy (secular name: Leonid Ivanovich Ustinov; 1884–1967) was a former Bishop of Pechersk, Nizhny Novgorod Metropolitanate, who was stripped of his holy orders and monastic status. He was born on June 16, 1884, in Suzdal, Vladimir Governorate, into a petty-bourgeois family.[1]

Education and Path to Monasticism

Ustinov received his primary education at a parish school, then graduated from the Suzdal Municipal Three-Year School (1899) and the School of Transportation Conductors in Vyshniy Volochek (1902), after which he entered service as a technician in the Kazan Transportation District. In 1910, having completed the History and Philology Faculty of Kazan University, he enrolled in the Kazan Theological Academy. On December 24, 1910, he was tonsured as a monk under the name Leontiy; on December 26 he was ordained a hierodeacon, and during his fourth year of study — a hieromonk. In June 1914 he graduated from the academy with a Candidate of Theology degree and was appointed a teacher at the Pastoral-Missionary Seminary at the Grigoriy-Bizyukov Monastery, where he lectured in patrology, liturgics, and ecclesiastical geography.[1]

Episcopal Ministry and Arrests

On April 24, 1922, Leontiy was consecrated Bishop of Pechersk, vicar of the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese. According to other sources, on April 19 of the same year he received an appointment from Patriarch Tikhon to the Penza Diocese and arrived in Penza on May 17 to temporarily administer it in place of the arrested Bishop Boris (Lentovsky). In July 1922 he was arrested for possession of a pastoral epistle from the patriarchal locum tenens, Metropolitan Agafangel (Preobrazhensky); in November NKVD him to exile in the Narym Territory for three years. While held at the Samara correctional facility, Ustinov petitioned for clemency before the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, M. I. Kalinin; owing to an aggravation of pulmonary tuberculosis, he remained in treatment at a Samara hospital until the end of 1923. In March 1924, an NKVD commission permitted him USSR, with the exception of Penza Governorate.[1]

Defrocking and Later Years

On July 24, 1924, Leonid Ustinov registered his marriage to Nadezhda Dzhus, a school employee, without notifying the Patriarchate. He had a child from this marriage. In January 1925 he was Nizhny Novgorod on charges of poisoning his wife; a civil court sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment. At the end of 1925, the patriarchal locum tenens Metropolitan Pyotr (Polyansky) suspended him from priestly ministry pending a judicial ruling. The ecclesiastical trial of Ustinov was postponed, since by the rules it was required to take place in the presence of the accused, who was in custody.[2] On October 19, 1933, by a resolution of the Holy Synod under the chairmanship of Metropolitan Sergiy, Ustinov was deprived of his holy orders, stripped of his monastic status, and removed from the clergy. His last years he spent in the family of his niece, Elena Aleksandrovna, who bore the surname Voronina (née Elena Aleksandrovna) and was the daughter of his brother.[2] He died on October 18, 1967, in Kovrov, Vladimir Region, from cardiosclerosis, and was buried there.[2][1]

Sources

  1. drevo-info.ru — LEONTIY (USTINOV) — Drevo — …
  2. penzenskaya-eparkhiya.rf — Bishop Leontiy (Ustinov) « Penza Diocese (archive)