Why Archimandrite Leontius was Anti-Social
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source: catacombhistory.blogspot.com
The future Archbishop of Chile (ROCOR), but then Archimandrite Leontius Fillipovich (†1971), recalls his time in the Catacomb Church:
“Living in an illegal position and serving a very small number of my faithful parishioners, I didn’t always have an opportunity to go and secretly visit my nearest fellow priest. If I did this – having failed to sustain my loneliness – and engaged in conversation with someone like me, just to strengthen myself, I prompted an unpleasant anxiety in him: Has the neighbour noticed the arrival of an unfamiliar face or, has some secret agent noted my arrival under secret surveillance of the house? Etc…
I too had a similar outlook. I tried to avoid meetings with the clergy at large or their friends. Through others, news reached me that there was somewhere a priest that was conducting church services secretly: but I had no wish to know who he is and from where, in what house he holds church services, because I didn’t know whether I could withstand the interrogation and not betray him should I be caught”.
