[2] His father died when he was six, and the family moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), then the provincial capital, and later that of independent Georgia.

Unlike many who left after the Soviet takeover, Peradze had actually secured legal permission to leave the country through the efforts of one of his former professors.

[4][5][1] After the annexation of Georgia, he was threatened with imprisonment, so the Georgian Orthodox Church sent Grigoli to the village of Mankhi in Kakheti as a teacher.

At a local council of the Church held at Gelati in 1921, it was decided to send Peradze to continue further studies abroad.

He was encouraged by his mentor, Cornelius Kekelidze, and the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Catholicos-Patriarch Ambrose.

In the spring of 1927 Peradze spent time researching manuscripts in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

[6] On 18 April 1931 Peradze was tonsured a monk at Holy Wisdom Greek Orthodox Cathedral in London, followed the next day by being named a hierodeacon.

In 1931 he became the first regular priest of the Georgian St. Nino Orthodox Church in Paris, which had been established by laymen in 1929, where he celebrated his first liturgy on 31 May.

In the same year he began to publish a Georgian scientific journal titled Jvari Vazisa ("Cross of Vine").

On 5 January 1934, again at Holy Wisdom, he was raised to the rank of archimandrite in recognition of his pastoral work with the Georgian community.