Alexis Toth

Description

Alexis Georgievich Toth^[a] (also Alexis of Wilkes-Barre; March 14, 1853 – May 7, 1909) was a Russian Orthodox church leader in the Midwestern United States who, having resigned his position as a Byzantine Catholic priest in the Ruthenian Catholic Church, became responsible for the conversions of approximately 20,000 Eastern Rite Catholics to the Russian Orthodox Church, which contributed to the growth of Eastern Orthodoxy in the United States and the eventual establishment of the Orthodox Church in America. He was glorified by the Orthodox Church in 1994.

Alexis Georgievich Toth was born to George and Cecilia Toth (or Tovt) on March 14, 1853, in Kobylnice, near Prešov in the Szepes county of Slovakia (then a part of the Austrian Empire) during the reign of Franz Joseph. Having completed his primary schooling, he attended a Roman Catholic seminary for one year, followed by three years in a Greek Catholic seminary and additional time at the University of Prague, where he graduated with a degree in theology.

Toth married Rosalie Mihalics on April 18, 1878, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1878 by Bishop Nicholas Toth, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Prešov. Following the death of his wife and child a few years later, he served in local parishes, as diocesan chancellor, and as professor and director at the Greek Catholic seminary of Prešov. In 1889, Fr. Alexis’ bishop received a petition from the Ruthenian Catholic Church in the United States, asking that Toth be sent to them as a priest. He arrived on November 15, 1889, and by the 27th of that month was holding services at St. Mary’s Greek Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Finding the church barely furnished and deeply in debt, he set about rectifying the situation, ultimately bringing the parish to a place of fiscal stability whilst never drawing a salary.