Athanasios of Lakkoskiti

Athanasios of Lakkoskiti (St Paul's), in the world Theodosios John Stanou, was born in 1881 in the village of Bichea Covurlui in Romania. In 1902 he came to the skete of Saint Demetrius-⁠Lakkou, in a hesychast place, inhabited by Romanians and belonging to Saint Paul's Monastery. He was tonsured a monk in the hut of Saints Athanasios and Cyril in 1903.

He was distinguished as a discerning confessor, an extreme faster and without possessions. With one sack of rusk he spent a long time. He did not even know the taste of food. Once, they say, when he fell ill, someone took him to feed him, to get him on his feet. He cooked roe deer with potatoes. He ate at noon. In the evening he told him to make him something else. "The midday meal was good too," he said. Perhaps he did not even realize it was meat...

It is also said that once his hut burned. He was saddened, but not discouraged, and left. He had no money to repair it. So the hut fell down and today does not exist. Athanasios stayed for years in a nearby cave, preserved to this day. There, glorifying and thanking the all-⁠good God, he departed for our heavenly homeland in December 1961. He left a good memory. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.