Ioann Kuleshov

Ioann Kuleshov was a schemamonk of the Russian kellia on Mount Athos, venerated by the faithful without synodal canonization. He was born in 1862 into a peasant family of the Stavropol province. As a child he was thoughtful and always praying, so that the neighbours called him the archimandrite. His mistress took him to her estate and gave him to a local priest for spiritual upbringing. From the age of seventeen he began to wander among the holy places of Russia.

In 1885 he came to Athos and lived first with his old friend Elder Gerasim (Popov) at the kellion of St John the Theologian, where he was tonsured into the mantle with the name Ioann. After the death of the elder of the Archangels kellion, which belongs to the Monastery of Stavronikita, the brothers there invited him to be their elder and guide. He accepted, but his goal was complete silence, and he built a new hut in the wilderness. Gerasim kept sending him bread.

He was an authority among the hermits of Athos. When the brotherhood of the Russian kellia decided to present the Serbian king with an icon on behalf of all the Athonite hermits, the choice fell unanimously on him. In August 1915 he took the icon to King Peter and received in return a cross on a ribbon.

The day of his death is not established, but he lived beyond 1919, for the list of the kellia for that year names him among the living.