St. Nektarios

St. Nektarios of Aegina was born Anastasios Kephalas on 1 October 1846 at Selymbria in Thrace, then part of the Ottoman Empire. A man of deep learning and piety, he became a monk and priest in Egypt and was consecrated Metropolitan of Pentapolis under the Patriarchate of Alexandria, esteemed for his holiness and eloquence. Yet envy and slander drove him from Egypt, and he bore this unjust disgrace, which shadowed much of his life, with remarkable patience and meekness.

Returning to Greece, he served humbly as a preacher and as director of a theological school in Athens, and in his later years founded and guided a convent of nuns on the island of Aegina, where he lived in poverty and prayer. Renowned already in life for his humility and his gifts of healing and counsel, he came after his death on 8 November 1920 to be venerated as one of the great wonderworkers of the modern Orthodox Church. He was formally canonized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1961 and is widely beloved, his memory kept on 9 November.