Arsenius of Winnipeg

Arseny of Winnipeg, known to be the most reverend archbishop (secular name Andrew Lvovich Chagovstov, Russian: Андрей Львович Чаговцов; 10 March 1866 - 4 October 1945) was a bishop of Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America.

He came to the United States as a monk in the early twentieth century and was instrumental in the founding of St Tikhon's Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania. He was administrator of the Canadian parishes under Abp. Platon (Rozhdestvensky) before returning in 1910 to Russia where he stayed until after the Russian Civil War. In 1926, he was elected Bishop of Winnipeg. He retired to St. Tikhon's Monastery where he established the Pastoral School.

Andrew Lvovich Chagovstov was born on March 10, 1866, into the family of a village church reader in the Kharkov Eparchy. As a young boy he tended his father's sheep, but his intelligence and love for school did not go unnoticed. When his father died, leaving him as the eldest of five children, he was sent to a school for clergy children for eleven years. From there he was admitted to the Kharkov Theological Seminary from which he graduated with distinction in 1887. The same year he was ordained a deacon and then priest.

His years in the seminary and thereafter are only vaguely known. He apparently married while in the seminary and was assigned as a priest to a village church in Kharkov. There is a question as to whether he had a son, but soon his wife died, probably about 1890, of an unknown cause. At some point later he was tonsured a monk with the name Arseny, in honor of St. Arsenius of Konevits. But, his journey from his wife's death to his tonsure was a time of great anguish as he related in his elevation speech as Bishop of Winnipeg. In 1900, he was appointed Igumen (Abbot) of Kuriansk Monastery. Two years later he joined Bp. Tikhon in America as he was a natural preacher with fluency in many Russian dialects, and thus, well suited to the American missionary scene. He was active among those returning from the Unia and served many communities after his arrival, including Troy, New York, and Mayfield and Simpson, Pennsylvania.

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