St. Paisios of Mount Athos (1924-1994)

Born Arsenios Eznepidis in Farasa in Cappadocia in 1924, baptised by the saint of the village, St Arsenios, and carried to Greece as a baby in the exchange of populations. He was a carpenter and a wireless operator in the civil war before he became a monk, and lived at Stomion near Konitsa, at Sinai, and from 1979 in the cell called Panagouda on the Holy Mountain, where for fifteen years thousands came to him. His counsel is practical, funny and searching, always turning the visitor from blaming others to the one thing they could change, and it is written down in the six volumes of Spiritual Counsels. He died of cancer on 12 July 1994 at the monastery of Souroti near Thessaloniki, where he is buried, and was glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2015. Feast: July 12.