Akakios of Kapsala

Akakios of Kapsala, with the secular name Andrew Chatzitheodoulides, the son of Christos, was born in 1891 at Akapnou in Cyprus and had three brothers who were clergy. He came young, in 1909, with other Cypriot brothers, to the cell of the Holy Unmercenaries of the skete of Saint Panteleimon of Koutloumousiou, where he was tonsured a monk in 1910. Because of the lack of water and for greater quiet, he moved to the cell of Saint George (the Thasite) at Kapsala, where he had a synodia of four pious brothers.

When relatives begged him for a week to agree to be photographed, he refused: "We monks are the unburied dead. The dead are not photographed. The living take photographs." He told his monks, "Do not think you have done anything, for you will lose it." He also said that books had helped him less than the memory of the saying, "Remember why you came out." The Holy Community sent him as confessor to the Metropolis of Philippi; there, one day, the children of a school began to stone him, and one stone struck his head and made it bleed. When his brothers asked why he had not complained, he answered, "Why? To lose my reward?"

For sixty years he was a worthy celebrant of the Most High; he stopped celebrating only when old age weighed on him. He foresaw his end: he asked his priest to celebrate on Thursday, not Saturday, since he would leave on a journey, and asked him to read the prayer of forgiveness for him, but he read it first for everyone. After Communion he would taste nothing: "I have a long journey ahead." That evening a young monk sat beside him; as soon as he dozed off, the soul of Elder Akakios flew to heaven, on the day of Saint Xenia, at the dawn of Saint Gregory the Theologian, 24 January 1971. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.