Levitsky was born in Kiev Province, and trained at the Kiev Spiritual School (uchilishche), the Kiev Seminary and the Kiev Spiritual Academy, completing a doctorate (kandidatura) in theology before being ordained a priest on 30 March 1879, his twenty-sixth birthday. In 1880 he was sent to teach at the Riga Seminary. After the death of several of his children in the 1880s, and his wife's death in 1886, he entered monastic orders, taking the monastic name Ioakim, and was elevated to the rank of archimandrite in 1893. At that same time, he was named rector of the Riga Seminary. On 14 January 1896, he was consecrated bishop in St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg as vicarial bishop of the Baltic dicastery for the Kamenets-Podol eparchy. The following year he was named Bishop of Brest, vicarial bishop of the Lithuanian eparchy. In 1900 he was made ordinary Bishop of Grodno and Brest. In 1903 he was transferred to the eparchy of Orenburg and the Urals and in 1910, was named bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Azama. Three years later, he was elevated to archiepiscopal dignity.online biography
