Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvenskii) of North America passed away on this day in 1934. The seismic shocks of the Russian Revolution (1917) arguably continue to shake up the Eastern Orthodox landscape in North America to this day. Metropolitan Platon had been a ruling hierarch there before the Russian Revolution. The young bishop Alexander (Nemelovsky) could not keep control of the situation when the money transfers from Petrograd stopped in 1917. A process of disintegration took hold. Parishes started to borrow money from banks against their mortgages. In this atmosphere of confusion, Fr. John Kedrovsky, an archpriest suspended by Bishop Alexander, went to Russia in 1923 and returned to America as a renovationist (schismatic) “married bishop.” Since the Russian Orthodox Church had no legal status in the USSR, Kedrovsky claimed before a US court that he represented the pre-revolutionary Russian Church. Metropolitan Platon was an experienced administrator. It is enough to mention that since 1902 to 1907 he was an efficient rector of Kiev Academy. (After Bishop Platon was assigned to America, Archbishop Anthony Khrapovitsky of Volhynia conducted an audit of the academy, with very unfavorable conclusions about the faculty.) When, in December 1918, the Petliura regime arrested Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) in Kiev, Metropolitan of Kherson and Odessa Platon petitioned the Anglican Archbishop Randall Davidson to request Metropolitan Anthony’s speedy release. In 1921, Metropolitan Platon returned to America. To halt the disintegration of the diocese, he had to navigate around Patriarch Tikhon (who had retired Platon pro forma to satisfy his Bolshevik handlers), the Russian refugee bishops in Serbia (who suspected that he sought autocephaly), and activists among his clergy and flock (who in fact wanted autocephaly). As a result of his “maneuvering”, at the moment of his death in 1934, Metropolitan Platon was under suspension simultaneously from both the Russian Church Abroad and Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) of Nizhnii Novgorod, the Deputy Locum Tenens of the Patriarchal Throne. In the same year, 1934, the ROCOR Bishops consecrated Archimandrite Vitaly (Maximenko) in Serbia as a ‘peacemaker’ for America. In 1935, Metropolitan Platon’s successor, Metropolitan Theophilus (Pashkovsky), traveled to Sremski Karlovci in Serbia. There, he met with Metropolitan Anthony (a host), Metropolitan Evlogy, who came from Paris, and Bishop Dimitry (the father of Metropolitan Philaret of New York), who had arrived from China. The meeting was aimed at implementing the project of metropolitan districts drafted at the All-Russian Moscow Council in 1918. As a result, Metropolitan Theophilus recognized Metropolitan Anthony as the senior hierarch among all Russian bishops in diaspora, and the ROCOR bishops in America joined the North American Mertopolitan District. With the election of Patriarch Alexis I in Soviet Russia in 1945, Metropolitan Theophilus decided to turn to the Russian Church with a request of autonomy for the North American Metropolia, which before the Russian revolution had been a regular diocese of the Russian Church. Although negotiations did not achieve the expected result, Patriarch Alexis permitted in April 1946 serving a memorial service for Metropolitan Platon at his grave in St. Tikhon’s Monastery (which also indicates a removal of the suspension). Metropolitan Platon is related to Holy Trinity Monastery in the following way. In 1926, he split with the Council of Russian refugee bishops in Serbia. His vicar, Bishop Apollinarii (Koshevoi, d. 1933) of San Francisco, refused to follow his ruling bishop and became one of the founders of the Russian Church Abroad in America. Metropolitan Platon retired him and reportedly Vladyka Apollinarii spent a couple of days in the New York subway without “a place to lay his head” (cf. Matt. 8:20). In 1927, the ROCOR Synod approved Bishop Apollinarii as a ruling bishop. A number of parishes, including St. Nicholas Church in Stratford, CT and Holy Fathers Church in Manhattan, came into existence thanks to him. Our stavropegial monastery was also established with the blessing of Archbishop Apollinarii of North America. Source: D.N.N., “Kedrovsky,” Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia. A.S.Buevsky, M.S.Mikhailov, Apollinarii. Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia. |
