Evmenios Saridakis

Venerable Evmenios Saridakis, also called Evmenios the New or Evmenios the Leper, in the world Constantine Saridakis, was a Greek spiritual elder of Athens, a hieromonk, known for his sacrificial love for God and neighbour. He was born on 1 January 1931 at Ethia, in the province of Monofatsi, Heraklion, in Crete, and fell asleep in the Lord on 23 May 1999 in Athens. He was entered among the saints by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on Thursday, 14 April 2022. His commemoration is on 23 May.

Childhood and calling

His parents, George and Sophia, had eight children, and Constantine was the eighth and last. His father died when he was only two, and the German occupation made things harder still; for this reason he received no schooling. As a small child he had seen for the first time the grace of the episcopate on the face of an archbishop: "I saw, he said, the light of the Holy Spirit on his face."

The monastic calling came to him on 1 January 1944, when he was thirteen. He himself told how he went to light the lamps at the church, then went home, where his sister Eugenia was. As they were eating, a radiance came which blinded him and entered into the depths of his soul. At once he cried out to Eugenia: "Eugenia, I will be a monk." From 1944 his soul had one aim: to give himself to Christ.

Monastic life

In 1948, at seventeen, he entered as a novice the holy monastery of Saint Niketas, in the south of the county, three hours on foot from his village. After three years of probation, in 1951, at twenty, he was tonsured a monk with the name Sophronios. (The English source writes that he was tonsured within three years "at seventeen", which does not fit the years given; we follow the Greek source, which places the tonsure at twenty.) At twenty-⁠three, in 1954, he was drafted into the army, where he fell gravely ill. Treated in vain in a hospital in Thessaloniki, he learned in Athens that he had Hansen's disease, leprosy, and was taken to the anti-⁠leprosy station in Athens, in the St. Barbara hospital for infectious diseases. There he was fully healed, without a trace.

After the cure he stayed at the station all his life, out of love for his sick brothers, as the spiritual father of the lepers. The management, since he was a monk, gave him a little cell near the church of the Holy Unmercenaries. Every day he performed the services, cared for the cleanliness of the church and nursed the paralysed patients who had nobody. There he suffered fierce and unceasing attacks of temptation, which he overcame. But at the beginning of the 1960s a small fall, the acceptance of one hidden thought of pride, that he was succeeding, became the cause of his passing through the terrible trial of demonic possession. After being cruelly tormented, he was freed at the Koudouma Monastery in Crete, with the help of the Mother of God and through the prayers of holy elders, in 1961.

When the leprosarium in Chios was closed, Saint Anthimos sent him the venerable monk Nikephoros the Leper, blind and paralysed, who arrived at the Athens hospital in 1957. Father Evmenios cared for him with all his heart and had him as spiritual father until his repose in 1964. He lived many wonderful events near Saint Nikephoros, before and after his repose. In one of them, on 4 January, the feast of Saint Nikephoros, Evmenios was sick and in great pain; a woman heard him say "I love you very much too". Asked with whom he was speaking, he answered: "Today is the feast of Saint Nikephoros, he came to see me. He told me that he loves me very much and came to comfort me in my pains." In 1975, at forty-⁠four, he was ordained priest and received the name Evmenios. In 1992 he was raised to the rank of archimandrite.

Repose and the testimony of Saint Porphyrios

Especially in the last decade he bore the cross of grave illnesses. He spent the last two years in the General Hospital of Athens "Evangelismos", which became a monk's cell. He gave up his last breath at sixty-⁠eight, on 23 May 1999, on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. It is noted that Father Evmenios belonged to the metropolis of Nicaea, as though the holy patrons of his metropolis had come to take their worthy child. He was buried in his village in Crete.

Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia, to whom he sometimes went for confession, called him "the hidden saint of our days". He said that "he prays to God not to be revealed to others, but only at the end of his life will it be revealed." He also said: "Go and receive the blessing of Elder Evmenios, for he is the hidden saint of our days. You can find someone like Elder Evmenios only once in two hundred years." The liturgical texts composed for him call him "the hidden saint of the last days", foreseeing and wonderworking.