Gelasios

Gelasios of Simonopetra was a monk of the Monastery of Simonopetra on Mount Athos, born in 1904 at Phocaea in Asia Minor and reposed in 1987. He is venerated by the faithful without synodal canonization.

He grew up in the piety of Asia Minor until the persecution of 1922. As a child he went to the chapels on the islets and asked his mother who the woman was who held the child in her arms; his mother answered that she was the Mother of God with Christ. At fifteen he volunteered in the Allied army. In a shipwreck in the Mediterranean he was saved in a wondrous way by the Mother of God and Saint Nicholas, after struggling three days and nights at sea. After the Asia Minor catastrophe he settled at Mytilene, where he was a fisherman and sailor and found comfort in the Mother of God of Agiasos.

One night he dreamed of a queen passing in a golden chariot. A monk of Agiasos explained the dream: the Mother of God was calling him to Athos. The same day he left his ship, his brother and his parents and set out for the Holy Mountain, to the Monastery of Grigoriou. He then reached Simonopetra, where he served for many years.