Theodore Nikolayevich Pashkovsky was born on February 6, 1874 in the village of Belichi, near Kyiv, where his father was the priest. He pursued seminary studies in Kyiv at an early age. Due to his reserved, gentle, humble and prayerful demeanor, he was nicknamed “the monk” by his fellow students. In 1892, while playing sports, Theodore sustained a leg injury, which led to a painful lingering bone disease, deemed incurable by doctors. When Saint John of Kronstadt visited Kyiv in 1893, Theodore received his blessing along with the saint’s counsel to pray fervently for healing. As he was quickly restored to good health, Theodore vowed in gratitude that he would consecrate his life to the Lord at the famed Monastery (Lavra) of the Caves in Kyiv, and in 1894, he was admitted to the novitiate there. That same year, he completed his seminary studies and was assigned to teach at the monastery’s parochial school.
Some months later, Bishop Nicholas (Ziorov) of the Aleutians and Alaska, who was looking to enlist talented recruits to serve the Church in America, visited the monastery. Perceiving in young Theodore the qualities necessary for such service, the bishop invited him to come to San Francisco to serve in the North American diocese. Among other missionaries recruited by Bishop Nicholas during his sojourn in the Russian Empire in 1895 were three future saints – Raphael (Hawaweeny), Alexander Hotovitzky and John Kochurov. After obtaining a release from the monastery, Theodore arrived in San Francisco, then the diocesan see of North America, with Bishop Nicholas in late 1895, taking up administrative duties in the diocesan chancery and serving as reader, sacristan and church school teacher at the city’s cathedral. Less than two years later, he was named the diocesan secretary. While serving in these capacities, Theodore met young Ella Dabovich, niece of Hieromonk Sebastian (Dabovich), the first American-born Orthodox priest, who was then serving at the San Francisco Cathedral. On November 8, 1897, Fr. Sebastian officiated at the wedding of Theodore and sixteen-year-old Ella Pashkovsky. Less than a month later on December 3, Theodore was ordained a deacon and to the priesthood just two days later by Bishop Nicholas. He was immediately assigned to the San Francisco cathedral, where he would remain for the next fifteen years.
In late 1898, Bishop Tikhon (Bellavin) succeeded Bishop Nicholas as diocesan hierarch. As one of Bishop Tikhon’s most trusted aides, Fr. Theodore managed the day-to-day affairs of the North American Diocese in San Francisco, while the bishop made extensive archpastoral journeys throughout the continent, until the diocesan see was relocated to New York in 1905. After organizing the orderly transfer across the country of the diocesan files, documents and archives, Fr. Theodore was appointed dean of the San Francisco cathedral and district dean of the Western States Deanery. The great earthquake of 1906 and ensuing fire demolished San Francisco’s Orthodox cathedral. With the fire approaching, Fr. Theodore himself salvaged many precious items from the cathedral. He then oversaw the timely construction of a new church there by 1909, which still stands and is now the cathedral of the OCA Diocese of the West. In recognition of his tireless labors, he was raised to the rank of archpriest in 1910. In 1912, Fr. Theodore petitioned Archbishop Platon (Rozhdestvensky), Saint Tikhon’s successor as diocesan hierarch of North America, to return to Russia, much to the disappointment of his parishioners in San Francisco. Fr. Theodore left San Francisco with his family, which by this time had grown to include four children, in late 1912. While arrangements for his transfer to the Diocese of Warsaw (then still part of the Russian Empire and Church) were being finalized, Fr. Theodore served as temporary pastor of St. Michael’s Church in Newark, NJ for a few months.
When he arrived in Warsaw in the spring of 1913, Fr. Theodore was pleased to serve again under the hierarch who had ordained him, Archbishop Nicholas (Ziorov), by then archpastor of the Warsaw Diocese. Fr. Theodore was assigned as second priest of Warsaw’s Holy Trinity Cathedral and to various administrative, educational and charitable ministries.
With the German occupation of Poland in World War I, most of the Russian state functionaries and clergy of the diocese were evacuated eastward into Russian held territory in 1915. Many of Warsaw’s Orthodox churches were soon turned into Roman Catholic churches, including Holy Trinity Cathedral where Fr. Theodore had served. Fr. Theodore and his family found refuge in Vilno (today – Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania), where Archbishop Tikhon, formerly of North America was the diocesan hierarch. Here, Fr. Theodore was assigned as rector of the Church of the Sign of the Theotokos. While he would hold this position for some time, he eventually relocated his family to Moscow due to the increasingly precarious wartime situation in Lithuania. He soon undertook service as a military chaplain along the frontlines in Belorussia (today – Belarus) and Ukraine, for which he was decorated. In the midst of the raging war and revolution, both Fr. Theodore’s beloved wife Ella and their eldest daughter perished from disease. Meanwhile, after serving under the white banner of anti-Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War, Fr. Theodore’s two sons were forced to flee Russia.
While in Moscow during the Civil War, with Patriarch Tikhon’s blessing, Fr. Theodore was active in distributing aid to the city’s needy and hungry population, often at great personal risk. He likewise aided the educational and famine relief efforts of the YMCA and the American Relief Administration (ARA), particularly along the Volga River in Russia, serving as translator, mediator with the frequently hostile Bolshevik authorities and spiritual leader. During this period, he pastored St. John’s Church in the village of Tikhomirovka near Tsaritsyn (currently called Volgograd).
Eventually, Patriarch Tikhon blessed Fr. Theodore to return to America and in April 1922, the Holy Synod in Moscow elected Fr. Theodore to be the first Orthodox Bishop of Chicago. In early May 1922, not long before his departure from Russia, Fr. Theodore served as translator for a historic meeting in which E.T. Colton, an American YMCA representative in Russia, conveyed to Patriarch Tikhon a request for the appointment of Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvensky) as head of the Church in America. While the Patriarch expressed full support for this appointment, he deferred final decision to the Higher Church Administration Abroad (later to become ROCOR), though just days later, a directive from the Patriarch, issued under pressure from the Soviet government, dissolved the Church Administration Abroad.
After returning to the US with his youngest child (ten-year-old daughter Ljuba) in July 1922, Fr. Theodore quickly reacclimated to the American ecclesiastical situation. With the departure of Archbishop Alexander (Nemolovsky), the burgeoning schismatic activity of the Living Church on the North American continent, led by John Kedrovsky, and other ecclesiastical divisions in the shadow of the upheaval in Eastern Europe, this was indeed a chaotic time for the Church in America. Following confirmation of Metropolitan Platon’s primatial leadership at the 3rd All-American Sobor in September 1922, arrangements were made for Fr. Theodore’s episcopal consecration. On November 25, he was tonsured a monk with the name Theophilus, and on December 3, his nomination to the episcopacy took place. He was consecrated on December 10, 1922 at St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York by Metropolitan Platon, Bishop Aftimios (Ofiesch) of Brooklyn and Archbishop Panteleimon (Athanassiades) of Neapolis, a hierarch of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem who had very recently arrived in America for an extended stay.
As Bishop Theophilus began his archpastoral service, the Metropolia was still structured as a single diocese. While his episcopal authority was that of an auxiliary bishop, he energetically undertook his hierarchal duties, tirelessly visiting Midwestern parishes and providing them with archpastoral oversight. His labors laid the groundwork for the eventual establishment of a diocese in the Midwest. He oversaw renovation of Chicago’s historic Holy Trinity Cathedral and produced publications in both Russian and English. He also made archpastoral visitations to Canada during this period to aid in providing episcopal supervision there.
In 1931, Bishop Theophilus was transferred to the see of San Francisco. Here he proceeded to renovate and expand the structure of Holy Trinity Cathedral that he had built a quarter century earlier. He would soon be charged with even greater responsibility. When Metropolitan Platon reposed in April 1934, Bishop Theophilus was immediately elected locum tenens of the Metropolitan’s see and soon elevated to the rank of Archbishop. It was clearly perceived throughout the Church that there were only two possible candidates to accede to the primacy: Archbishop Theophilus and Bishop Leonty (Turkevich), who, though consecrated a hierarch just a year earlier, was a proven church leader. When the 5th All-American Sobor convened in Cleveland in November 1934, the North American Metropolia did not yet have an established procedure for electing her primate. In an effort to conclude prolonged discussion at the council on how the election should be conducted, Bishop Leonty suggested that the Sobor should simply acknowledge the senior hierarch – Archbishop Theophilus – as Primate. The council participants responded by singing “Axios”. Archbishop Theophilus was touched by this acknowledgment but asked that the hierarchs express their will in a canonical vote. The hierarchs immediately caucused in the sanctuary of Saint Theodosius Cathedral and announced their choice of Archbishop Theophilus as Metropolitan, canonically electing him on November 23, 1934.
At the time, the evolution of the several episcopal sees in the Metropolia into full-fledged territorial dioceses continued to develop. In some ways, the Metropolia was still governed as a single diocese with only the Metropolitan having the full hierarchal authority normally ascribed to bishops. While each bishop was assigned a particular territory, the structures usually found in dioceses were just beginning to be established. Throughout the years of his primacy, Metropolitan Theophilus would remain Archbishop of San Francisco, but as the Metropolia’s administrative headquarters were in New York and many parishes on the east coast were subordinated directly to him, he often traveled across the country to fulfill his archpastoral obligations.
His duties also necessitated travel abroad. In 1935, Patriarch Varnava of Serbia invited the senior metropolitans of the Russian diaspora to travel to Sremski-Karlovci in Yugoslavia where they signed an agreement reconciling their sometimes conflicting relationships. This agreement forged harmony and peace between the Metropolia and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) and unified their parallel jurisdictions and hierarchies in North America from 1935 until 1946. The 6th All-American Sobor in 1937 approved the initiative of Metropolitan Theophilus in signing the agreement in Serbia but also reaffirmed the preservation of the autonomous governance and structure of the Metropolia that had been in place since 1924.
By decision of the same Sobor, St. Tikhon’s Pastoral School (later: Seminary) and St. Vladimir’s Seminary were opened in 1938 for the training of clergy. This filled a significant void in the clerical-formational needs of the Metropolia, as the previous theological school in America had closed in 1923. As the Church’s Primate, Metropolitan Theophilus took an active role in the founding and initial development of these new theological schools.
Due to the loss of Saint Nicholas Cathedral to the schismatic “Living Church” in civil courts, the Metropolia’s Primatial cathedral and chancery in New York had been stationed in a temporary locale for nearly two decades. However, in 1943, a permanent venue was acquired – the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection. The following year, Metropolitan Theophilus presided in the new cathedral over the 150th anniversary celebrations of Orthodoxy in North America. In the decades following its acquisition, the cathedral was the site of numerous All-American Councils and other significant historical events. With the transfer of the Primatial see to Washington, DC in 1981, it is now the episcopal see of the Diocese of New York and New Jersey.
In the Metropolia’s continued pursuit of ecclesial peace and unity under the leadership of Metropolitan Theophilus, a decision of the 7th All-American Sobor in 1946 sought reconciliation with the Church of Russia by recognizing the spiritual authority of the Patriarch of Moscow while maintaining a broad autonomy in the governance of the Metropolia. This overture towards relations with the Patriarchate in Russia caused a relapse in the relations between the Metropolia and ROCOR, as those hierarchs, clergy and parishes who could not accept any relationship with the Patriarchate reconstituted a separate ROCOR jurisdiction in North America. However, the Metropolia’s subsequent negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate towards reconciliation were unsuccessful, as the Metropolia could not accept the Patriarchate’s insistence on its prerogative of confirming the Metropolitan’s election, including the right of naming another hierarch should the Patriarchal Holy Synod in Moscow deem the candidate nominated by the All-American Council unsuitable. Due to the failure of these negotiations, caused in part by the adamant avoidance by Metropolitan Theophilus of meeting with Patriarchal representatives sent to America to conduct talks, the Patriarchate reactivated a previously imposed, but briefly provisionally lifted, ecclesiastical suspension of the Metropolia’s hierarchs. Thus, in accordance with Metropolitan Theophilus’ own position and vision, the Metropolia’s autonomous governance would continue unfettered.
In spite of some bouts with infirmity in his last years, Metropolitan Theophilus continued to faithfully fulfill his archpastoral duties, still regularly making arduous cross-country journeys by train as demanded by his responsibilities. In the spring of 1950, he was gravely stricken by cancer. As his condition soon began to rapidly deteriorate, Archbishop Leonty rushed from Chicago to the Metropolitan’s hospital bedside in San Francisco to receive the dying Primate’s final exhortations concerning the future direction of the Church in America. According to eyewitnesses, the last words spoken by Metropolitan Theophilus were “church responsibility.” Early in the morning of June 27, 1950, he reposed in the Lord. His funeral took place at Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco on July 1, 1950, and he was interred at the Serbian Cemetery in the nearby town of Colma.
The son of Metropolitan Theophilus, Colonel Boris Pash, a US military intelligence officer, served as security chief for the Manhattan Project and military leader of the Alsos Mission. After World War II, in 1946, as a foreign liaison officer in Japan on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff, Col. Pash was instrumental in facilitating the affiliation of most of the Orthodox Church in Japan with the North American Metropolia headed by his father. This Japanese Orthodox group would remain a diocese of the Metropolia until 1970, when, reunified with a smaller faction under the Moscow Patriarchate, the Orthodox Church in Japan was granted autonomy by the Russian Church concurrently with the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America. In the 1960s, Col. Pash briefly served as a member of the Church’s Metropolitan Council.