Leonid of Georgia

The photography of Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia Leonide

Leonid (Leonidas) (Georgian: ლეონიდე, Leonide) (1860–1921) was a Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia from 1918 to 1921.

Born Longinoz Okropiridze (ლონგინოზ ოქროპირიძე) in Georgia, then part of Imperial Russia, he graduated from the Theological Academy of Kiev, Ukraine in 1888. He was later involved in missionary activities, chiefly in the Caucasus.

Ogropiridze served as an inspector of the schools operated by the Society for the Restoration of Orthodox Christianity in the Caucasus, an organization established by the Russian authorities. From the 1890s to the 1910s he served as an archimandrite of the monasteries of Zedazeni, Khirsi and of St. John the Baptist in Georgia. He also chaired the Commission for Correction of the Georgian Bible and was a member to the Georgia-Imeretia Synodal office. Leonid was actively involved in the Georgian autocephalist movement which succeeded in the restoration of the independent Georgian church from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917. During 1918, he functioned as a bishop of Gori, Imereti, Guria-Samegrelo and as a metropolitan of Tbilisi.

On November 28, 1918 following the murder of Kyrion II he was elected a Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia. During his tenure he faced several problems such as the lack of international recognition of the Georgian autocephaly and the persecution of the Georgian church by the Bolshevik regime established by the invading Russian army in February 1921.

Leonid died on June 11, 1921, during the cholera epidemics in the Georgian SSR.

References

(Georgian) "ლეონიდე". In: Encyclopaedia Georgiana (Georgian Soviet Encyclopedia). Vol. 6. 1982.