ABBESS XENIA
Abbess of the Iveron Monastery
(Pashkova Tatiana Yurievna)

Date of birth: October 7, 1975

Date of tonsure: July 7, 2013

Date of ordination: May 3, 2016 

Saint’s Day: February 6, June 6

BIOGRAPHY:

Tatiana was born in Fergana, Uzbek SSR, on October 7, 1975, in a family of workers. Baptized in 1994. Spent her childhood and youth in Siberia. 

Graduated from the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music and Moscow State University of Culture and Arts. She is a singer and a stage show director by training. 

Since 2008, has worked for the Moscow Orthodox Theatre “Water of Life” at the New Monastery of the Saviour as a singer, actress, director, art director assistant and the head of the theater.  

Tatiana has never been married and has no children.

Irenaeus, Bishop of Orsk and Gai, influenced the decision of Tatiana to leave her artistic career and abandon the world.   In 2009, the New Monastery of the Saviour in Moscow assigned a location for the future Orthodox theater “Water of Life”.  Bishop Irenaeus, who was an abbot then, supervised the work of the theater company.  When he became a bishop, he invited the company for a tour to the Orsk Diocese. On that tour, the first conversation with Father Sergiy, the future spiritual father of the Iveron Monastery, took place. Father Sergiy took an essential part in Tatiana’s way to monasticism.  She became his spiritual daughter and left the capital for Orsk. 

Tatiana was tonsured on July 7, 2013 and received the name Xenia, in honor of the Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg, the Full-for-Christ.

On May 3, 2016, she was ordained as the abbess of the Iveron Monastery of Orsk.

In 2018, Mother Xenia graduated from the Orenburg Theological Seminary and defended her graduation thesis dedicated to the Way to the Knowledge of God of archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov).