St. John the Merciful (d. 619)

John was born at Amathus in Cyprus to a rich family, and was married and widowed before the people of Alexandria asked the emperor Heraclius for him as their patriarch, about 610. He held that whoever is able to give is bound to: he had the city’s poor counted, some seven thousand five hundred of them, fed them every day and called them his masters, and he spent the church’s wealth ransoming captives and sheltering the refugees who fled the Persian conquest of Palestine. When the Persians came against Alexandria he sailed home to Cyprus, and he died at Amathus in 619. His Life was written by a Cypriot bishop, Leontius of Neapolis, and Limassol keeps his feast in his own church. Feast: November 12.