The future saint was born in 1913 in Romania, into a family of deeply religious peasants Maxim and Catherine Jacob, and was baptized with the name Ilia. In infancy, he was left an orphan, and eleven years later he buried his teacher-grandmother. In 1932, Ilya, despite his bitter orphanhood, graduated with honors from high school. At the age of twenty, he entered the ancient monastery of Romania - the Nyametsky monastery
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