High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Patriarch Sergius I (Russian: ?????? I; born Ivan Nikolayevich Stragorodsky (???? ?????????? ?????????????), January 23 [O.S. January 11] 1867 ? May 15, 1944) was the 12th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, from September 8, 1943 until his death. He was also the de facto head of the Russian Orthodox Church as Patriarchal locum tenens in 1925-1943. Ivan Stragorodsky was born in the town of Arzamas near Nizhny Novgorod in a deeply religious family of an archpriest. Named Sergius after becoming a monk he studied in Nizhny Novgorod seminary and later in Saint-Petersburg Theological Academy. In 1890 Sergius was sent with an Orthodox Christian mission to Japan and became fluent in Japanese (he already knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew languages).