Hieromonk John (Gascuel)

Hieromonk Ioannis has two lives. In the first was Gérard Gascuel, the fashionable playboy born in 1947 in Cevennes, France. He studied photography in Paris (École Louis Lumière) and then worked as an artistic photographer for famous fashion magazines and newspapers, as well as in advertising. His personal photographic exhibitions were hosted in Paris, in museums (Museum of Photography) and in Art Festivals abroad (Japan, Canada, USA, etc.). He was the celebrity photographer, a carefree world traveler. His second life begins at the age of 33, in 1983, when during a journalistic mission in Greece, he meets and learns about Orthodox monasticism. He became a monk in the Stavronikita monastery and then practiced in Kapsala of Mount Athos. He then moves to the Monastery of Saint Savvas, in the Judean desert, where he lives for many years next to his Elder, Father Seraphim.

In 1993 he founded the Brotherhood of Saint Martin, an association of Christian artists, which today has close to 700 members, while in 1996 he settled in Cevennes, southern France, where he founded the Hermitage of Saint Faith, a place of prayer and departure. Today the magazine Art sacré is published from the Skete of Agia Pisti, while Fr. Ioannis is the author of many works: Hommes de Lumière, Fils de lumière, Pèlerinage au Mont Athos, J'ai soif d'une eau de vie, L'amour en question, Insaissable fraternité, Le jardin de la foi.