Gabriel of New Skete (d. 1916)

Gabriel of New Skete (d. 1916) was born at Plomari on Lesbos, in a family of ten children. He came in 1820 to the hut of Saint Haralambos of the Chaldeans in the New Skete. He was a virtuous, devout, diligent monk, "most exact in the spiritual work and in sobriety," according to Father Chrysostomos of the New Skete. Once a wrongdoer wanted to go to his hut to steal, thinking the elder was away. He knocked at the door and Elder Gabriel opened it. The man lost his composure and did not know what to do. The elder greeted him with kindness and welcomed him. Moved, the man confessed what he had planned and asked forgiveness with tears. The elder thanked God, the Mother of God and Saint Haralambos for their protection, forgave him from the heart and spoke to him about repentance. The elder's words moved him deeply and led him to sincere repentance, so that he decided to stay there forever and become a monk; so he did, and he reposed peacefully in repentance.

In 1825 his brother in the flesh, the monk Eugenios, came to him, a monkish man, temperate and humble, who reposed in 1922 at the age of one hundred and three. Elder Gabriel reposed peacefully in his beloved hut in 1916, aged one hundred and thirteen. At the same age was martyred the patron of their hut, the Hieromartyr Haralambos, the oldest martyr of our faith. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.