St. Nektarios of Aegina (1846-1920)

Anastasios Kephalas, born in Thrace in 1846, who worked as a shop boy in Constantinople and wrote verses from Scripture on the wrappings of the goods he sold. He became a monk on Chios, studied in Athens, and was consecrated Metropolitan of Pentapolis in Egypt, where slander at the patriarchal court had him removed without a hearing in 1890. He never defended himself. He preached in Greek villages as a travelling preacher, ran the Rizarios seminary in Athens for fourteen years, and in 1904 founded the convent of the Holy Trinity on Aegina, where he lived as its confessor and gardener. He died in a paupers’ ward in Athens in 1920. He is among the most loved saints of modern Greece, and his tomb on Aegina is visited daily. Glorified in 1961. Feast: November 9.