On 11 November 1962, a 22-year-old man who joined the Syrian (St. Mary's) Monastery in Wadi Natroun in Egypt was ordained as a monk, with the name "Missael" after St. Missael the Anchorite, where Pope Shenouda III (117th Pope from 1971 - 2012) and Metropolitan Pachomious (the Patriarchal locum tennis in 2012) were fellow monks.