Bishop Gerasim (Eliel) was born in 1961, in Torrance, California, and raised in Palos Verdes. He studied Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, later shifting his focus to Spanish literature. He later received his Master of Divinity degree from Saint Vladimir’s Seminary in 2012.

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His Grace was tonsured as a monk in May 1992 and ordained to the diaconate and priesthood in 1995. In 2000, he was elected Abbot of St. Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, CA, a position he held until 2009. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, he made frequent pastoral visits to the Diocese of Alaska and to various countries such as the Republic of Georgia, Ecuador, Brazil and Serbia. In September 2013 he was assigned to Saint Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas, Texas, where he serves as cathedral dean. On May 18, 2021, the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America elected Archimandrite Gerasim as Bishop of Fort Worth, Auxiliary to His Eminence Archbishop Alexander and the Diocese of the South. He was ordained to the episcopacy on Tuesday, June 29, 2021, at Saint Seraphim Cathedral in Dallas, Texas.