Venerable Gabriel of Athos (Ilyinsky), Archimandrite

Venerable Gabriel was born on January 8, 1849, in Kyiv province to a poor family, with the secular name George. Orphaned at age 12, he was raised by distant relatives and finished village school. After a serious illness he vowed to devote himself to God's service. At 18 he traveled to Jerusalem and Mount Athos, where he entered the Russian Skete of the Prophet Elijah, taking monastic vows in 1869 under the name Gabriel in honor of the Archangel Gabriel. In time he became abbot (archimandrite) of the skete. In 1894 he founded a metochion of the skete in Odessa to support Russian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land and Athos, later opening similar metochia in Taganrog and Novonikolayevsk. He died in 1901 while in Russia on the skete's business. His relics were found incorrupt on July 22, 1994, in Odessa; that same year he was canonized by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and universal veneration was confirmed by the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on November 30, 2017. His memory is kept on June 22/July 9.