Eumenius of Gortyna

Holy Venerable Eumenius of Gortyna was a Cretan monk of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who, with his brother Parthenius, founded the monastery of the Mother of God at Koudoumas. He was born in 1846 at Pitsidia in Crete to a pious family, and his baptismal name was Emmanuel Charitakis. His brother Nicholas, later Parthenius, had been born in 1829.

In 1858 the two brothers were received as novices in the Hodegetria monastery of the Metropolis of Gortyna and Arcadia in Crete. In 1862 and 1865 they were tonsured rasophore monks with the names Nestor and Methodius, and in 1866 they received the great schema with the names Parthenius and Eumenius. With the abbot's blessing they laboured at a dependency of the monastery in the caves of Martsalo.

In 1868 Eumenius was ordained deacon and in 1870 priest. In 1874 the brothers withdrew to the wilderness in the Asterousia mountains, and in 1878 they founded the monastery of the All-⁠Holy Mother of God at Koudoumas. Parthenius reposed in 1905 and Eumenius in 1920. Through their pure lives they received the gift of working miracles, and after their repose they were widely venerated in Crete.

On 8 January 2007 the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered the two venerable fathers among the saints. They are commemorated on 23 July (new style).