Born on December 27 in Madrid, Iowa, USA. He was a Presbyterian and worked with the American Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). From 1913 to 1917, he worked at the YMCA branch in Shanghai, China. From 1917 to 1918, he served as personal secretary to J. R. Mott and was also the YMCA secretary for Russia and director of the Association for the Assistance of Prisoners of War in Russia and Siberia. In his work, he supported Russian and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war. On October 25, 1918, he was arrested by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission and spent some time in Butyrka prison for his religious activities, after which he was expelled from Soviet Russia. In 1920, he graduated from Iowa State University. He moved to Berlin, where in 1921 he organized the Russian Polytechnic School of Correspondence Education and the Russian publishing house 'YMCA-Press'. In 1924, he moved to Paris, and in 1925, he married Margaret Holmes. He led the Russian Polytechnic School of Correspondence Education and founded the Higher Technical Institute in Paris in 1930. He actively supported the Russian Student Christian Movement (RSCM), the 'YMCA-Press' publishing house, and the Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. He was the international secretary of the YMCA for the Russian emigration and senior secretary of the YMCA for Europe from 1938. He was a member of the executive committee of the 'YMCA-Press' publishing house and was an expert on anti-religious activities in Russia. With the onset of World War II in 1941, he returned to the USA, and in 1944, he went back to Paris. In 1947, he became the executive secretary of the international YMCA committee and in 1948, he joined the board of trustees of Saint Vladimir's Seminary. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Saint Sergius Institute in Paris in 1948. He led the YMCA research group 'Religion in Russia' in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Russian émigrés knew him as Pavel Frantsevich. After retiring in 1961, he returned to the USA and worked for several years at the National Council of Churches in the USA. He was the chairman of the executive committee of the Tolstoy Foundation in the USA and editor of the newspaper 'The Living Church' in Milwaukee. From 1969 to 1971, he was editor, and then from 1976 to 1982, he was the honorary editor of the journal 'Religion in Communist Dominated Areas'. Until his death, he lived with his wife in Highland Farms, Northern California, USA.