Pietro Leoni

Pietro Leoni (1 January 1909 – 26 July 1995) was an Italian priest of the Society of Jesus and the Russian Greek Catholic Church. His memoir of surviving the Gulag, ''Spio dei Vaticano'', was published after his return to the West.

Early life

He was born to peasant parents in Montaltovecchio, near Forlì, Emilia-Romagna, Kingdom of Italy. In 1922, he entered the minor seminary at Modigliana.Constantin Simon S.J. (2009), ''Pro Russia: The Russicum and Catholic Work for Russia'', Orientalium. Page 460.

In 1927, Leonid joined the Society of Jesus, which sent him to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He arrived at the Russicum, a Jesuit-run seminary established to train priests of the Russian Greek Catholic Church for missionary work in the Soviet Union and the Russian diaspora, in 1934. After briefly teaching there as an in residence philosophy tutor, Leoni applied to permanently join the Russian Apostolate and was ordained in 1939 as a priest of the Byzantine Rite.

Military chaplain and missionary

In 1940, Fr. Leoni was drafted into the Italian Royal Army and served as a military chaplain in Albania and Occupied Greece. In 1941, Fr. Leoni's unit was assigned to Dnipropetrovsk, as part of Operation Barbarossa.

Before his departure for the USSR in October 1941, Fr. Leoni was granted an audience with Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. He later recalled, "I told Szeptycki about the condition of the Catholic and Orthodox religions in the Ukraine and about the attitude of the German authorities to the clergy. I reported that under the Germans the Catholic Church was unable to function, that the Orthodox clergy enjoyed the trust of the Germans, and that the number of Orthodox priests was increasing under the German occupation."

In 1943 he was released from military service as the Italian army disintegrated and he decided to stay on as a missionary priest in Romanian-occupied Odessa.

When the Red Army reoccupied the city on 10 April 1944, Fr. Leoni was at first allowed, despite the stiff opposition of the Moscow Patriarchate's Eparchy of Odessa, to remain in the city and continue to minister to local Catholics. Despite this, NKVD surveillance of Fr. Leoni and his parishioners began almost immediately.I. I. Osipova (2003), ''Hide Me Within They Wounds: The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the USSR'', Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, Fargo, North Dakota. Page 152.

Even though Soviet anti-religious legislation strictly forbade the registration of foreign priests and even though the NKVD already had a file on him, Fr. Leoni was allowed to register as the pastor of the Catholics of Odessa in November 1944. His congregation numbered about 8,000 people, most of whom were ethnic Poles. Despite this, Fr. Leoni offered only the Byzantine Rite Divine Liturgy in Old Church Slavonic and preached in Russian.

Fr. Leoni also received several Orthodox Christians, including at least one priest, into the Russian Greek Catholic Church, for which he later accused local Russian Orthodox Bishop Sergei (Larin) of denouncing him to the NKVD.

Political prisoner

On April 29, 1945, he was arrested by the NKVD and brought the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow for interrogation. To the outrage of his interrogators, Fr. Leoni refused to answer questions that might harm the Church or other underground priests, such as his former classmate Walter Ciszek.

Fr. Leoni's, "sometimes flippant answers earned him spells in solitary confinement, but surprisingly he was not tortured, or at least he does not mention it."Constantin Simon S.J. (2009), ''Pro Russia: The Russicum and Catholic Work for Russia'', Orientalium. Page 586.

While refusing to inform against his fellow Catholics, Fr. Leoni had no problem with telling his interrogators exactly what he thought of the Soviet Government. According to his case file, he once said, "Given that I am a Catholic religious, I was and am an enemy of Marxism and of the political regime which exists in the USSR - a regime, which, in my opinion is not different from Fascism... I believe that in the USSR there is neither democracy, not freedom for the people. The Soviet regime has stripped the people of freedom of religion, of freedom of the press, and of freedom of expression. One is forbidden to think freely, to develop one's initiative or creativity... I have never calumniated the Soviet Government: I have only said what I believe without mincing my words..."Constantin Simon S.J. (2009), ''Pro Russia: The Russicum and Catholic Work for Russia'', Orientalium. Page 587.

When NKVD interrogators confronted him with "witnesses" who claimed that he was a supporter of Fascist dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Fr. Leoni calmly replied, "I do not deny that I favored a change in the political system in the USSR but I never advocated the achievement of such change through an attack on the Soviet Union... I was not a supporter of the system established by Mussolini in Italy and I never told anyone that I shared Mussolini's political views... In Odessa, during the occupation, I helped several young people to avoid being deported to Germany by the Nazis."

On 13 September 1945, Fr. Leoni's interrogation ended and a formal indictment was approved. He was declared guilty of espionage on behalf of the Vatican, anti-Soviet agitation, and of trying to convert the Orthodox to the Eastern Catholic Churches. On November 12, 1945, an NKVD Collegium sentenced him to ten years in the Gulag.

While serving his sentence at Temlag in the Mordovian ASSR, Fr. Leoni was again arrested on June 15, 1947, and accused of, "belonging to a counterrevolutionary organisation" of fellow political prisoners which interrogators dubbed "Volya" ("The Will"). According to investigators, "Volya" was planning a prisoner uprising, was smuggling letters to Western Governments, and also trying to tunnel out of the camp. Both Fr. Leoni's memoirs and the investigative file, however, reveal that "Volya" was created and organized by an NKVD agent provocateur named Goryachev.

Even so, on August 28–29, 1947, a special Temlag camp court declared Fr. Leoni guilty of violating article 58 of the Russian Criminal Code and another 25 years in Rechlag were added to his sentence.

Fr. Leoni later recalled of the transit prison in Kirov, "Bed-bugs and roaches multiplied by the millions and at night it was impossible to defend one'self against them because the room was in total darkness. Only when they brought supper did they bring us a miserable oil lamp which immediately they removed. They left us at the mercy of these parasites which in the darkness became even more insatiable and aggressive. The three nights I spent there were a real martyrdom. And even more suffering did I have to endure from human parasites."

Like many other political prisoners in the Gulag, the memoirs of Fr. Leoni also describe being preyed upon and robbed by the '' Vory v Zakone''.

One fellow prisoner who was incarcerated with Fr. Leoni in Vorkuta later recalled the priest's response when a KGB Lieutenant-Colonel arrived in the camp to deliver a lecture on " Soviet humanism". At first a few prisoner laughed and sarcastically heckled the visitor, then Fr. Leoni stood up and shouted in flawless Russian, "Don't believe the Chekist liars! Don't believe this godless regime! The Chekists are leading you astray, fight them!"

For a brief moment, chaos reigned and the guards were only able with difficulty to restore order, after which Fr. Leoni was sent to a punishment cell.Constantin Simon S.J. (2009), ''Pro Russia: The Russicum and Catholic Work for Russia'', Orientalium. Page 588.

Fellow political prisoner Jan Urwich later wrote about how, in 1955, a delegation from Moscow arrived to collect signatures for the Stockholm appeal, in which the World Peace Council had called for a global ban on nuclear weapons. A lecturer first made a speech calling for signatures and the KGB officer chairing the meeting urged any prisoner who wished to speak in favor of the appeal to do so. Urwich later recalled, "From the back of the hall came a voice speaking in Russian with an Italian accent, 'Whoever signs the Stockholm appeal signs his own death warrant! Better a cruel death under the atomic bomb than living on in this ''happy paradise'' where we find ourselves now!' The hall literally erupted. The resulting noise and chaos could not be quelled and the meeting disintegrated. Everything went to pieces."

On 25 April 1955, a Collegi of the Soviet Supreme Court commuted Fr. Leoni's sentence to seven years imprisonment. As he had already more than served his new sentence, he was told that would be released and allowed to return to his native Italy.I. I. Osipova (2003), ''Hide Me Within They Wounds: The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the USSR'', Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, Fargo, North Dakota. Page 173.

Jan Urwich later recalled, "The news of Fr. Leoni's departure for Rome, at a time when no one expected it, planted much hope and joy... This man made us feel confident that he would tell that Free World, to which he was returning,the tragic and incredible truth about the country the champions of Humanism and the brotherhood of peoples."

On 17 May 1955, Fr. Leoni was handed over to representatives of the Italian Government in Vienna, through the intervention of the Vatican.

Later life

Following his return to Italy, Fr. Leoni lived for a time at the Russicum, but, according to Fr. Constantin Simon, "even extreme resilience has its limits." Severely traumatized by his experiences in the Gulag, Fr. Leoni distrusted Russicum students who had lived in Soviet Russia and suspected them of being assassins for the KGB. Fr. Leoni also sharply opposed the efforts by the Russicum's then Rector, Fr. Bohumíl-Feofil Horáček, S.J., to rehabilitate the Moscow Patriarchate in the eyes of Catholics in the West. Fr. Leoni, who believed the Moscow Patriarchate to be "a mere instrument of the Atheist State", openly heckled Fr. Horáček whenever he spoke of these views publicly and also gave media interviews expounding his own views.Constantin Simon S.J. (2009), ''Pro Russia: The Russicum and Catholic Work for Russia'', Orientalium. Page 589.

In response, the Society of Jesus transferred Fr. Leoni to write his memoir ''Spio dei Vaticano'' at the Jesuit houses in Florence and Cesena. After his memoir was published in 1959, Fr. Leoni, who wished to work as a missionary in the Russian diaspora, was assigned to Canada.

Fr. Leoni served as pastor of the Russian Catholic parish of the Presentation of Our Lady in Jerusalem in Montreal, where he also worked at the Catholic hospital dedicated to St. Frances Cabrini.

On 3 November 1974, Fr. Leoni responded to recent efforts by Feminists to pass legislation aimed against workers at Catholic hospitals by giving an interview over Canadian radio, "in which he clearly and unambiguously defended", the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on human sexuality.

Death and legacy

Fr. Pietro Leoni died of a heart attack while swimming in a Canadian lake on July 26, 1995. He was 86 years old.Methodios Stadnik
"Nec Plus, Nec Minus, Nec Aliter: A Brief History of the Russian Byzantine Catholic Church and the Russian Catholics."
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Following his death, the Russian Catholic parish of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in Jerusalem was closed down permanently by Fr. Leoni's Ecclesiastical superiors in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal. The church building has since been given to the Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Mar Addai of Toronto and is currently in use as Sts. Martyrs of the East Chaldean Catholic Church.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Fr. Leoni's memoir of the Gulag, ''Spio dei Vaticano'', has been translated from Italian to Russian and published. It has yet to the translated, however, into English.

See also

*Anti-Catholicism in the Soviet Union

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leoni, Pietro
1909 births
1995 deaths
20th-century Canadian Eastern Catholics
20th-century Eastern Catholic clergy
20th-century Italian Jesuits
Anti-Catholicism in the Soviet Union
Canadian anti-communists
Canadian anti-fascists
Canadian Eastern Catholics
Catholic resistance to Nazi Germany
Critics of dialectical materialism
Critics of Marxism
Foreign Gulag detainees
Eastern Catholic writers
Italian anti-communists
Italian anti-fascists
Italian Eastern Catholics
Italian expatriates in Canada
Italian expatriates in the Soviet Union
Italian military chaplains
Italian people imprisoned abroad
Male critics of feminism
Clergy from Montreal
People from the Province of Forlì-Cesena
Persecution of Catholics during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII
Persecution of Christians in the Eastern Bloc
Prisoners and detainees of the Soviet Union
Religious persecution by communists
Russian Eastern Catholics
World War II chaplains
Participants in the Vorkuta uprising