Mitropolit Tikhon (Shevkunov)

Georgy Alexandrovich Shevkunov was born on July 2, 1958, in Moscow into a family of medical professionals. In 1982, he graduated from the Screenwriting Faculty of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, specializing in “literary work.” After graduating from the institute, he was baptized and immediately afterward came to the Pskov-Caves Monastery, where he became a novice. Since August 1986, he worked on a freelance basis, as a novice of the Pskov-Caves Monastery, in the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate. He took part in preparing the celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus’, and served as a consultant and author of the scripts for the first films on the spiritual history of Russia. On July 2, 1991, he was tonsured as a monk at the Donskoy Monastery, taking the name Tikhon in honor of Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus’. In July of the same year he was ordained a hierodeacon, and in August 1991 a hieromonk. After that he served at the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow. In 1993, he was appointed rector of the Moscow metochion of the Pskov-Caves Monastery, into which the parish of the Vladimir Cathedral of the former Sretensky Monastery had been transformed. On June 6, 1995, he was appointed abbot of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery, with elevation to the rank of hegumen. On September 8, 1998, he was elevated to the rank of archimandrite by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus’ at the Moscow Sretensky Monastery. Since 1999, he has been an academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Since March 2001, he has been chairman of the Voskresenie agricultural production cooperative in the Mikhailovsky District of Ryazan Oblast (a former devastated collective farm being restored by the monastery). On July 17, 2001, he was appointed rector of the Sretensky Higher Orthodox Monastery School, which was transformed on December 26, 2002, into the Sretensky Theological Seminary. On July 27, 2009, he became a member of the presidium of the Inter-C