He was born on August 1, 1947 in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, Moscow Oblast, in an Old Believer family.[1] He was baptized in infancy with the name in honor of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Constantine the Great. By his own admission: "I was born into an Orthodox Old Believer family, in the town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo. To be more precise, in Zuyevo, where the Old Believers originally lived. Before the revolution, there were several Old Believer churches and house of worship in our city, <...> Our Titov's house on Volodarsky Street, where I was born and grew up, was located next to the houses of famous Old Believers Morozovs and Zimins [ru]. We were friends with the Zimins as families. From early childhood, my grandmother, Maria Nikolayevna, took me to the Church, which was located on Kuznetskaya Street, it was called the "black prayer room", because monks once served in it. <...> There have always been icons and ancient church books in our house, although it was not safe at the time of atheistic persecution."[2]
In 1962, after graduating from the 8th grade of school, due to family difficulties, he began to work: he became an apprentice turner at the Orekhovo-Zuyevo Cotton and Paper Mill foundry, an enterprise founded by Old Believer industrialists Morozov family.[3] He worked at the K. I. Nikolayeva Orekhovo Textile Mill, worked as the head of the Department of the foundry and mechanical plant.[4]
During his work, he studied at evening school, technical college and the Moscow Automobile Mechanics Institute, from which he graduated in absentia in 1976. Because of his work at the state defense plant, he was not conscripted into the Soviet Army. He has worked for the plant for a total of 35 years.[3]
In his youth, he was a member of the CPSU, however, as Archpriest Yevgeny Chunin notes, "he left the party long before 1991 — when he consciously joined the Church of Christ. Then this issue was considered at the confessional level and was successfully resolved long before the first ordination of the future metropolitan."[5]
In the second half of the 1980s, he took an active part in the activities of the Kristall Sobriety club.[4][6] Until 1997, he worked at the plant as the head of the technical control department.[3]
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