Eulogios of New Skete

Eulogios of New Skete, a hieromonk, with the secular name Eustathios Morfis, son of Leonidas, was born in 1890 in the village of Agios Vlasios in Boeotia, to poor, peasant and faithful parents. After finishing primary school he went to Livadeia to learn the cobbler's trade. In 1910 he decided to dedicate himself to monasticism. He was not yet fifteen. With a few necessary clothes and very little savings as his only property, he set out on foot for Piraeus with a fellow villager; on the road a coachman picked them up. At Piraeus they took the ship for Thessaloniki. Their destination was Athos. They did not have even the price of the fare. The God-⁠fearing captain, learning their purpose, let them travel free. On the Holy Mountain they struggled at the hut of Saint Spyridon in the New Skete. They were tonsured by an Elder Benedict. Beside him, the hieromonk Gerasimos and he stayed fourteen years and, besides monastic life, learned the art of icon painting. In 1924 he returned to his homeland and for a time worked as an icon painter.

In 1926 he was ordained deacon and priest by Metropolitan Jacob of Phthiotis (d. 1932) and made abbot of the Dadi monastery, in 1930 of the Antinitsa monastery and in 1936 of the Damasta monastery in Phthiotis. At Damasta he threw himself zealously into the full renovation of the monastery. During the German occupation the monastery suffered much. Abbot Eulogios helped some New Zealand allies to escape, after hosting them several days in the monastery. For this help he was arrested by the occupiers, with others, and taken to the prison in Lamia. The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, for the precious services rendered to the Nation in hard and difficult times, when the integrity of the Fatherland and the supreme good of freedom were endangered, resolved to grant him its approval and the golden Cross of the Apostle Paul. He reposed in the Lord on 3 August 1954. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.