St. Sophronius, Archbishop of Irkutsk

Sophronius, born Stefan Kristalevsky in 1703 in the Poltava region of Ukraine, studied at the Pereyaslav seminary and became a monk in 1730. He served in Kiev and from 1742 at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St Petersburg, where he became its head.

In 1753 he was made bishop of Irkutsk in Siberia, then a vast and remote diocese. He travelled as far as Nerchinsk, Kirensk and Yakutsk, sent out missions, built churches and founded a seminary in which he taught himself. He died in Irkutsk on 30 March 1771 and was canonized by the Local Council of the Russian Church in 1918.