Potapy Emelianov
Potapy Emelianov Потапий Емельянов was a Russian clergyman and Eastern Catholic martyr under Stalinism.
Pyotr Emelianov was born and raised in a family of Priestless Old Believers, who were received by Bishop Antony Khrapovitsky. As a special protege of Khrapovitsky, Emelianov followed him, first to Volhynia and then to Kharkiv. Emelianov eventually became a monastic priest, or Hieromonk, of the Pochaiv Lavra, and took the monastic name of Potapy.
Following the Russian Revolution, Emelianov was received by Exarch Leonid Feodorov into the Russian Greek Catholic Church and communion with the Holy See along with his entire Old Ritualist parish, which was located at Nizhnaya Bogdanovka, near Kadiivka in the Luhansk Oblast of modern Ukraine, in 1918. He was subjected three times to flogging at the insistence of local Orthodox priests, arrested repeatedly by the armies of multiple political factions during the Russian Civil War, and, after having refused to renounce his "Jesuit politics", narrowly escaped summary execution by General Anton Denikin's anti-communist White Army. After subsequently being released when Starobielsk was captured by the Red Guards, Fr. Potapy returned immediately to his parishioners and wrote in a letter to a fellow priest, "Do not worry that they persecute and torment us; we stand firmly upon the Rock of Peter."
During the subsequent Soviet anti-religious campaign, Emelianov was arrested by the Soviet secret police for his religious beliefs and ministry. He was declared guilty of espionage, based on having gathered and shared information about local religious persecution with his superiors, who had then shared it with the western news media, and "bribing peasants to convert to Catholicism", based on his previous role in helping to distribute food and medical supplies sent by Fr Edmund A. Walsh's joint American and Papal humanitarian missions during the Russian famine of 1921. Following nearly a decade of slave labor in the Gulag, including first felling trees above the Arctic Circle at Solovki prison camp and then digging Joseph Stalin's notorious White Sea–Baltic Canal, Potapy Emelianov died at Nadvoitsy in Soviet Karelia.
Since 2003, Potapy Emelianov has been under investigation for possible sainthood as one of what Fr. Christopher Zugger has termed, "The Passion bearers of the Russian Catholic Exarchate". Potapy's current title is Servant of God.
Early life
Pyotr Andreevich Emelianov was born in Ufa Governorate around 1889 into a peasant family of Bezpopovtsy, or Priestless Old Believers. His ancestors had left the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-17th-century, over the liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow and Tsar Alexis of Russia, who both enforced conformity in vain using excommunication, Siberian internal exile, torture, and even burning at the stake for heresy. In about 1901, a nine year old Pyotr and his family were received into the Russian Orthodox Church as Edinovertsy, or Old Ritualist Orthodox, by the Bishop of Ufa and Menzelinsk, Anthony.When Kyr Anthony was named Bishop of Volhynia in 1902, he brought the young Pyotr Emilianov with him. He was tonsured at the Pochaiv Lavra, the monks of which are famous for their anti-Catholicism, by the Bishop, and took the monastic name of Potapy. Although a monk, Brother Potapy was briefly conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, but was released for reasons of ill-health, and was sent by his Bishop to study for the Orthodox priesthood at Zhitomir.
File:Pochayiv.jpg|thumb|left|A view of the still Greek-Catholic Pochaiv Lavra during the early 1800s.
According to Deacon Vasili von Burman, "During his pastoral studies in Zhitomir, the monk Potapy became fascinated by the writings of the Holy Fathers of the Church and the proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils. He was struck most forcibly by the testimony of the Holy Fathers supporting the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff. In this way young Potapy gradually became possessed by the idea of reunion with Rome."
Zhitomir was the location of St Sophia's Cathedral and still remains today one of the main population centers of both Roman Catholicism and Poles in Ukraine. Even so, Deacon Vasili von Burman continues, "Until this time, Potapy had never in his life met a single Catholic; consequently there could be no question of Catholic influence on him from any external source."
In 1911, Potapy finished his course and was ordained to the priesthood as a hieromonk for the Pochaiv Lavra.
In 1916, Kyr Anthony Khrapovitsky became Archbishop of Kharkov. In March 1917, Father Potapy was assigned to serve temporarily at the Old Ritualist Orthodox parish of ethnic Russians at Nizhnaya Bogdanovka, near Lugansk in modern Ukraine. The Russians in the village had been transplanted there in the 17th century, as an outpost against the Islamic Khanate of Crimea.
According to Pavel Parfentiev, "Fr. Potapy gained the love of the town at once. His perfect knowledge of the liturgical services and his fine sermons attracted people from the other parishes and even from other villages." In response, the parishioners asked the Bishop to assign Fr. Potapy to them permanently, alleging that their regular Pastor was, "idle and lazy". The Bishop agreed to their request.
Conversion to Catholicism
As a gifted and persuasive preacher, Fr. Potapy told his parishioners about the lives of the Roman Pontiffs, including Leo and Gregory the Great, who are also venerated as Saints in the Russian Orthodox Church.By 1918, Fr. Potapy Emelianov had become convinced that true Orthodoxy could not be had except through Communion with the Holy See and had convinced the majority of his parishioners of the same belief.
Seeking to be formally received, Fr. Potapy travelled to Lugansk and met with Fr. Mikhail Yagulov, an ethnic Georgian and pastor of the only Roman Catholic parish in the city. Fr. Yagulov received Fr. Potapy cordially and urged him to submit his request to Fr. Anton Kwiatkowski, the Regional Dean of Kharkov.
It was in Kharkov that Fr. Potapy learned that, after the 1917 February Revolution, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky had formed an Exarchate for Russian Rite Catholics, and assigned Fr. Leonid Feodorov as the Exarch.
After a month long journey that involved crossing between German and Bolshevik lines, Fr. Potapy Emelianov arrived in Petrograd and met with the Exarch, Leonid Feodorov, whom he found living in the Rectory of St. Catherine's Roman Catholic Church on Nevsky Prospect. After questioning him closely over several days and making several recommendations, on June 29, 1918, Exarch Feodorov received Fr. Emelianov's Profession of Faith inside St. Catherine's, after which the latter joined him in offering the Byzantine Rite Divine Liturgy.
Before Fr. Potapy returned to Boganovka, Exarch Feodorov informed him that Ukraine had been excluded from the Russian Catholic Exarchate and that his parish was therefore subject to Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Exarch Feodorov promised, however, to soon send Fr. Gleb Verkhovsky to visit Bogdanovka in his name.
Fr. Potapy later wrote, "When I returned to the parish with the Catholic blessing of the Exarch, and with his commission and message, and read it aloud after a sung Moleben, the spiritual joy and the tears knew no bounds, because the message was filled with the warmest fatherly love and exhortation."
When asked many years later why he had become a Catholic, Fr. Potapy responded, "The basic principle of my soul is not to oppose itself to the truth."
Persecution
Emelianov and his parishioners underwent severe harassment and violent persecution from the Imperial German Army, the Red Guards and the White Army during the Russian Civil War.Second Hetmanate
During his absence in St. Petersburg, local Orthodox clergy had attempted to convert his parishioners back to Orthodoxy. When Fr. Potapy returned after these efforts failed, Orthodox priests approached the occupying troops of the Imperial German Army and accused Fr. Potapy of being a spy for the Soviet secret police, or CHEKA. In response, a mixed force of German soldiers and those from the Ukrainian People's Army of Pavlo Skoropadskyi's Hetmanate invaded Bogdanovka in a punitive expedition and subjected both Fr. Potapy and his parishioners to flogging.During the second such flogging expedition, Father Potapy was injured so badly that he had to be brought to the hospital in Luhansk. He was visited there by Fr. Mikhail Yagulov, who afterwards visited and explained to senior officers in the Imperial German Army the real reasons for the recent accusations against Fr Potapy. In response, the last Kaiser's military granted Fr Potapy a safe conduct upon his release and prevented further punitive expeditions as long as German occupation of the region lasted.
On 25 September 1918, Bishop Neophyte, the assistant to the Archbishop of Kharkiv, arrived in Nizhnaya Bogdanovka with a force of fifty soldiers of the Ukrainian People's Army. Most Old Ritualist Greek Catholics of the village fled, while those who remained listened as the Bishop, with tears in his eyes, pleaded with them to return to the Russian Orthodox Church.
In reply, the villagers said, "In our pastor's eyes we saw not only tears, but blood, caused by the floggings done at your orders." They then knelt down before the Bishop and said, "Please, leave us alone with our convictions and our pastor."
Russian Civil War
When Bogdanovka was occupied by the anti-communist Volunteer Army of General Anton Denikin in September 1919, Fr. Potapy was arrested and incarcerated for three months.During his imprisonment at Starobielsk, a White Army Procurator, who believed that the Catholic Church in Ukraine had, "ensnared", Fr. Potapy, demanded that the priest renounce his, "Jesuit politics". Fr. Potapy replied, "I follow no earthly politics. I wish only to help spread the knowledge of the Tsardom of Jesus Christ and to show the Rock upon which it is founded to those who wish to enter it. If you choose to call this Jesuit politics, that is your affair. I would simply tell you that this is the command of Christ our Tsar. If it became necessary to suffer and if the Lord gave me strength, I would not only not renounce this position, I would agree to affirm it a thousand times with my blood. This is my goal and this is what I am committed to and if you choose to call this politics, do as you please."
During his imprisonment, Fr. Potapy alone was exempted at the last moment from a prisoner transfer that would have meant certain death. All of prisoners in the transfer were subsequently shot without trial as part of the ongoing White Terror, officially while attempting to escape. On December 23, 1919, Starobielsk was again occupied by the Red Guards, who released everyone who had been imprisoned under General Denikin.
In a letter written after his release to a fellow priest, Fr. Potapy recalled, "My appearance there seemed to them like a resurrection from the dead. Tears of joy flowed uncontrollably. It was as if everyone, young and old, had to touch me to be convinced that I was really alive, since they had long since been assured that I no longer existed." Later in the same letter, Fr. Potapy added, "Do not worry that they persecute and torment us; we stand firmly upon the Rock of Peter."