Vasileios was born in 1892 in the village of Cesniero in Bursa, of the Metropolis of Nicomedia, in northwestern Anatolia. He went to Jerusalem in 1906 for his secondary education, graduating from the seminary there in 1914. On December 3, 1914 he took monastic vows being renamed Benedict, and on the following day he was ordained deacon by Metropolitan Keladion of Ptolemaida. After a two-month period in the patriarchal secretariat, he served during the war as deacon at Acre and then accompanied Patriarch Damianos during his exile to Damascus. He returned for three further years to the patriarchal secretariat in Jerusalem from 1918–21. From 1921 to 1925 he studied at the University of Athens, in 1925 graduating in law, economics, politics and theology. In 1927 he represented the Patriarchate of Jerusalem at the First World Conference on Faith and Order at Lausanne. In February 1929 he was put in charge of the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre in Athens. In October of the same year he was ordained priest, then advanced to the rank of Archimandrite. Recalled to Jerusalem in 1946, he was elected a member of the Holy Synod, and given special responsibility for the patriarchate's legal and financial affairs, a field in which he displayed marked aptitude. In 1950 he spoke as the representative of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem at the Geneva Assembly on the internationalization of the Holy City of Jerusalem. In March 1951 he was consecrated Archbishop of Tiberias in the Church of the Resurrection.
Patriarchate
On January 29, 1957 he was elected patriarch, succeeding Timotheos who had died over a year earlier. His enthronement took place on March 1, 1957. With his election the Jordanian government approved a law establishing new regulations concerning relations between the Confraternity of the Holy Sepulchre and the indigenous Arab community of the Orthodox Church. The rules gave the Arab laity a role in the financial affairs of the Patriarchate, and required that the candidates for the offices of the patriarchate be citizens of Jordan, but the changes were discontinued after negotiation between the Patriarchate and the Jordanians. Following his election, Benedict actively pursued a rehabilitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Starting in 1961, after undertaking a North American tour to raise funds, the structure was completely rehabilitated, including repair of the foundations and cisterns, and restoration of the interior and exterior walls. Thousand of stones were replaced including removal of old and injection of new mortar. Columns were replaced and new capitals added were added.
Death and burial
On December 10, 1980, as the rotunda dome was finished, further restoration of the church came to a halt with the death of Benedict. He died of a heart attack in Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, where he was recovering from a stroke he had suffered 10 days earlier. The burial took place on December 14, 1980 at the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. A kindly and courteous man, traditionalist in his theology, Patriarch Benedict was critical of the 'ecumenist' policies of Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, and in his later years was more reserved over questions of Christian unity than any other Orthodox church leader. He was also a very educated man, being fluent in French, English and Arabic, in addition to his native Greek. For his services he was honoured with several high church and secular decorations. Patriarch Benedict I is listed as being a Mason according to the website of the Grand Lodge of Greece, of the lodge «Αδελφοποίησις».
