Section 03: The Priest at the Polyclinic

The long central labor of St. Porphyrios’s life: the chaplaincy he took up in 1940 at the Chapel of St. Gerasimos in the Athens Polyclinic, near Omonia Square, and held for some thirty-three years — a hidden Athonite hesychast set down in the noise and need of a great hospital in the middle of the modern city, supporting himself by his own labor, and there, in a small chapel beside the wards, hearing confessions and reading souls until central Athens quietly became a place of pilgrimage to an elder almost no one had heard of.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox / Athonite (canonized 2013)

Contents

File Topic
Thirty-Three Years in Athens The 1940 appointment, through Professor Alivizatos, to the Chapel of St. Gerasimos in the Athens Polyclinic near Omonia; the conditions of the chaplaincy and the minimal pay; how he supported himself, his parents, and his work by his own labor (poultry, a weaving shop, his incense and charcoal); the hidden hesychast in the heart of the city; the disputed length of the chaplaincy
Reading Souls in the City What happened in the little chapel: the hours of confession, the consolation of the sick and dying, the slow gathering of spiritual children, and the charism of insight at work amid the suffering of a hospital — the elder hidden in plain sight

How to Use

  • Read Thirty-Three Years in Athens for the institutional facts of the chaplaincy: where, when, under what conditions, and how a penniless monk sustained a thirty-three-year ministry in central Athens.
  • Read Reading Souls in the City for the human substance of those years — the confessions, the sick, the spiritual children, and the gift at work.
  • The charism itself, with its documented accounts and the Elder’s cautions, is treated in Section 04: The Charism of Insight.

Cross-References