Nun Katherine grew up in the Episcopal Church in New York. She embraced the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith while serving as a counselor for homeless families at Raphael House in San Francisco. In 1988 she was tonsured a nun, continuing to serve at the shelter. In 1990 she joined the St. Xenia sisterhood in the mountains of northern California. In 1992 she was sent to Indianapolis to take the position of superior of the St. Xenia Monastic Community where she still serves. The community life includes daily common and private prayer, work, and fellowship.
She has also spent time in monasteries in Ethiopia and Herzegovina (former Yugoslavia) to be enriched by the Orthodox Christian life as practiced in those countries.
Her seminary training included biblical Greek, preparing her for the ongoing spiritual practice of studying the Bible and early Church writers in the original language. She is involved in an ongoing comparison of current psychotherapy approaches with the “soul therapy” of the early Church, offering clients the best of both while also ensuring traditional Christian clients and their pastors that counseling will not introduce elements contrary to Church tradition. She has been given the blessing to serve as a pastoral counselor by his Grace, Longin, Serbian Orthodox Christian bishop of Midwestern America.
