In August 2023, as Russia’s war on Ukraine raged, Pope Francis told a gathering of Russian youth, “You are heirs of the great Russia—the great Russia of saints, of kings, the great Russia of Peter the Great, Catherine II, the great, enlightened Russian Empire of so much culture, of so much humanity.” His remarks were not well-received by many Ukrainians, including the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who said that the Pope’s praise of “the worst example of extreme Russian imperialism and nationalism,” caused “great pain and apprehension.” While the Pope’s remarks were doubtless well-intentioned, I agree with Vatican commentator George Weigel that “if Francis wanted to lift up models of ‘Russian greatness,’ why not Vladimir Solovyov…, (w)hy not Andrei Sakharov…(w)hy not the innumerable martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s…(w)hy not the brilliant and courageous poet Anna Akhmatova…?” To this list of true Russian heroes, however, I would add another: Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, the 18th-century pioneer priest of the Alleghenies.
Prince Demetrius Gallitzin was born in 1770 in the Hague, Netherlands, to a noble and highly placed Russian family. (His father was a Russian ambassador serving in the Netherlands at the time, and his godmother was Catherine the Great!) Although baptized in the Orthodox Church, he was not religious as a child, as his father had by then embraced atheism, and his mother had abandoned her German Catholic upbringing. When Demetrius was a teenager, however, his mother had a profound conversion to the faith of her youth, and Demetrius soon followed, entering the Catholic Church with the Confirmation name Augustine. In 1792, his parents sent him on an educational tour of the United States, but upon landing in Baltimore, 22-year-old Demetrius soon requested the bishop’s permission to enter the seminary there and become a Catholic priest. (During this time, the young prince went by the pseudonym Augustine Smith.) In 1795, Demetrius was ordained a priest, becoming the first Catholic priest to complete his entire formation in the United States.
The Russian prince didn’t want to be any ordinary priest, but a missionary priest on the margins of American society. In 1799, he requested and received permission to found a Catholic community in the scarcely settled Alleghenies of Western Pennsylvania. He renamed the small colony he found there “Loretto,” after Our Lady of Loreto. Over the next three decades, he spent his entire personal fortune (and then some) on enlarging and sustaining Loretto. Time and again, he turned down opportunities for personal advancement, faithfully serving his flock in this rugged pioneer land. Thanks to his efforts, “(w)here only a dozen Catholics dotted the area, over ten thousand Catholics flourished in a multitude of churches throughout central and western Pennsylvania at his death.”
I first encountered Prince Gallitzin on a road trip with my husband and two young daughters during the summer of 2023. A friend had lent me a book of Catholic pilgrimage sites throughout the United States, and as we spent long hours in the car, I was busily plotting meaningful stops along our route. One site in particular caught my eye: the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel in Loretto, Pennsylvania, which stands on the site of the little church originally built by Fr. Gallitzin. (In a twist of Providence, Charles Schwab grew up in Loretto and later donated the funds to build the magnificent church that stands there today.)
As we drove through Loretto, Fr. Gallitzin’s legacy, and the locals’ pride in that legacy, was palpable. Streets still bear the names of saints. A beautiful statue of Fr. Gallitzin stands over his tomb in front of the Basilica. Signs throughout the town designate significant locations in Fr. Gallitzin’s life. I was deeply struck by the love of the Russian prince priest for the Americans he served, and by the love his American flock had for him—and continues to have, over 200 years later.
I have close friends and fond memories in Russia, and improving Russian-American relations has long been a passion of mine. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 affected me deeply, and it seemed to dash any hopes of mutual understanding and friendship between Russia and the US for decades to come. As the war continued to rage that summer—the same summer Pope Francis stirred controversy as he lauded Catherine the Great and Imperial Russia—I found inspiration and hope in a surprising place: a little Appalachian town where Catherine the Great’s godson once gave up everything for the Americans he loved.
On a human level, the future of Russian-American relations truly seems hopeless. Granted, the Trump administration has prioritized normalizing relations with Russia, but it is far from certain that those efforts will yield fruit, and they could easily be undone by the next presidential administration. More importantly, such “normalization” will not be grounded in truth and justice so long as the Putin regime continues its brutal war in Ukraine and myriad human rights abuses. Yet renewed Russian-American relations cannot come at the cost of moral clarity and shared understanding of fundamental truths, making the situation seem truly hopeless indeed.
Fr. Gallitzin gives me hope by showing that politics, world leaders, and the structural forces of international relations are not exhaustive of reality. Powerful as these are, they pale in comparison to Divine Providence. The idea of Demetrius Gallitzin becoming a devout Christian, then a Catholic priest, and giving up fame and fortune to minister to American pioneers was far-fetched to say the least. It wasn’t just that his family and friends were opposed to these developments—the vast, impersonal forces of class, national identity, and international politics all pulled him in the opposite direction. Fr. Gallitzin’s story is one that only God could have written. For those of us who work in the realm of international affairs, it can be easy to forget that the world is ultimately governed by Providence, not theories of international relations or political leaders. We need figures like Fr. Gallitzin to remind us of this and show that, no matter the circumstances, we can choose the path of Christian love and courage. At the same time, Russian youth would do well to look to this Russian prince turned American priest as an example, not just of heroic virtue, but of brotherly love for the American people. In his address to Russian youth, Pope Francis encouraged them to be “sowers of seeds of reconciliation, small seeds that, for the moment, in this winter of war will not sprout in the frozen ground, but that in a future spring, will blossom.” The story of Fr. Gallitzin gives me hope that this is indeed possible, for both Russians and Americans, and that God can ensure these blossoms will bear fruit in ways we cannot yet imagine.
