03 — The Antileprosy Station in Athens
The last seven years of St. Nikephoros’s life: the 1957 closure of the Chios leprosarium and the transfer of its remaining patients — Nikephoros among them — to the Saint Barbara Antileprosy Station at Aigaleo in Athens, and the progressive blindness and total disfigurement that he bore, his witnesses record, without complaint.
Tradition: Greek Orthodox (20th-c. Cretan monk; glorified 2012)
This section covers the Athens years (1957–1964), the setting in which Nikephoros became known to the wider circle of witnesses who would carry his memory — above all his fellow-patient and disciple, the future St. Eumenios (Saridakis). It also treats squarely the medical reality of advanced Hansen’s disease: the blindness, the loss of the extremities, the near-total paralysis, and the theological meaning his tradition finds in his bearing of it.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| transfer-to-saint-barbara-1957.md | The closure of the Chios colony in 1957 and the move to the Saint Barbara Antileprosy Station, Aigaleo, Athens |
| blindness-and-total-affliction.md | Progressive blindness, disfigurement, and near-total paralysis borne without complaint; the medical course of the disease |
See Also
- 02 — The Leper Colony of Chios — the four decades before the transfer
- 05 — Eumenios and the Witnesses — the witnesses of the Athens years
- 07 — Repose and Relics — the end of the Athens period