Dubinin was born in a family of intelligentsia as the younger among two children in the present day Southern Federal District. His paternal relatives were local Russian Orthodoxes while his maternal relatives were Roman Catholics in Byelorussian SSR. According to the Belarus rules for mixed unions, he had to be christened as Roman Catholic as a second child in a family. Nevertheless, he was "unfairly" christened in the Moscow Patriarchate just like his older sister.[2] By his own admission, “he became a member of the Catholic Church as soon as the opportunity arose, in 1991, at the age of 18”.[3]
He returned to Russia and began to work in the Franciscan parishes and as superior of the different local Franciscan communities, with the break during 2002–2005, when he studied at the Pastoral Liturgical Institute in Padua, Italy with the licentiate of the Liturgical Theology degree. From 2005 until 2018 he served as a General Custos of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual in Russia and at the same time was a lecturer at the Major Theological Seminary of Mary – the Queen of Apostles in Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.[4]