From officer to priest
Born in 1856, Leonid Chichagov came from a family long associated with Russian military service; he trained at the Corps of Pages and the Artillery Academy and entered the army as an officer. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 he saw heavy fighting and was decorated for bravery, earning the Cross of St. George at Plevna along with several foreign honors.
His acquaintance with John of Kronstadt, who became his spiritual director, drew him toward the Church. In 1890 he resigned his commission and settled in Moscow, where he studied theology, and in 1893 he was ordained first a deacon and then a priest. After the death of his wife in 1895 he embraced monasticism, taking the name Seraphim.
Scholar of Diveyevo and the canonization of St. Seraphim of Sarov
As a monk, Seraphim devoted himself to the history of the Seraphim-Diveyevo convent, gathering testimonies and documents and publishing an extensive chronicle in 1896. He also composed a biography of Seraphim of Sarov founded on the recollections of nuns who had known the elder.
This scholarship furnished much of the documentary basis for the glorification of Seraphim of Sarov, and in 1903 Chichagov took an active part in organizing the canonization, a celebration attended by the Imperial family.
Bishop, metropolitan, and martyr
Consecrated to the episcopate in 1904, Seraphim governed in turn the dioceses of Sukhumi, Orel, Kishinev, and Tver, and was active in charitable and pastoral works. The Revolution brought repeated arrests, imprisonment in Taganka, and exile.
In 1928 he was made Metropolitan of Leningrad. His preaching was treated by the authorities as anti-Soviet, and after his retirement in 1933 the persecution of the clergy continued to close in around him. Arrested again in his eighties, he was sentenced by an NKVD troika and shot at the Butovo firing range in 1937.
The Russian Orthodox Church glorified him on 23 February 1997, by the act of its Council of Bishops in Moscow, among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
