Bessarion of Dionysiou

Bessarion of Dionysiou, with the secular name Evangelos Zarkadis, son of George, was born in 1878 at Chalkida in Euboea. As a young man he saw in a vision the Holy Great Martyr Paraskevi, who comforted him for a painful family event and told him he would be a monk. He came to Dionysiou Monastery in 1903 and was tonsured a monk there in 1906. He was distinguished as a monk with much humility, fervent faith and blessed simplicity. As steward of the monastery's dependency at Mariana in Chalkidiki he received a visit from the Holy Forerunner, who showed him the site of a fallen church, which Bessarion rebuilt. At another time, on the night of the Resurrection of the Lord, when he was obliged to stay at the dependency, he heard heavenly melody and sensed an unspeakable fragrance, and so the Holy Forerunner comforted him again. Another time he saw the Forerunner and was rebuked for leaving his lamp unlit.

Being at the dependencies, he sensed that his end was near. He bade farewell to friends and acquaintances and returned to the monastery to die. He arrived with joy. He thanked the Holy Forerunner warmly who had helped him in this wish too, to end his life in his monastery of repentance. After his return he stayed two days, bade farewell to all the fathers and was reconciled with them. He was brave, true, honest, industrious and unfeigned. Once, at the dependencies, he fearlessly challenged the Turks to kill him, in order to be counted among the martyrs of the faith; but he became a daily martyr of conscience. He reposed in the Lord on 24 August 1952. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.