Bloom p. Antonios

Metropolitan Antonios of Souroz, born Andrei Borisovich Bloom, was born in Lausanne in 1914 to a family of diplomats and soldiers. He lived for some of his childhood in Persia and then (after the Russian Revolution of 1917) in France.
He studied medicine, specialized in surgery and completed a PhD in oncology. During the second world war he served in the French army and then, during the French resistance, offered his services as a surgeon.
In 1943 he became a monk. In 1948 he relocated to London to the Brotherhood of Saint Sergius. In 1956 he was appointed vicar of the Russian parish in London and in 1957 he was ordained a Bishop. Five years later he was appointed by the Moscow Patriarchate as Archbishop and Exarch of Western Europe, while in 1966 his throne was elevated to Metropolitan. He died in 2003 at the age of 89.
His action, his books, his sermons and the scope of his personal radiation have ranked him as one of the most important figures of Orthodoxy of the 20th century in the European area.