George Kapsanis

George Kapsanis, archimandrite and abbot of Gregoriou Monastery on the Holy Mountain, a theologian and church writer, reposed on the day of Pentecost, 8 June 2014. He was born in 1935. He led the monastery from 1974 and served it for nearly forty years.

Before becoming a monk, as a layman, he was a researcher and assistant at the Theological School of Athens, specializing in pastoral theology. Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos recalls him at the theological conferences of the late 1960s and early 1970s, speaking simply and with an ecclesial mind, especially to young people. He wrote on pastoral care in American practice, on the crisis of theology and ecumenism in America, and, in his 1972 doctoral thesis, on pastoral care for prisoners. He decided to become a cleric after the words of a foreign scientist who wondered that he dealt with pastoral care while being a layman.

In the early 1970s he was preparing for a lectureship the study "Pastoral Ministry According to the Sacred Canons," but he did not present it and withdrew to a monastery in the Metropolis of Chalkida, then to Gregoriou. The study appeared in 1976, when he was already abbot, and links pastoral care with the Rudder, the sacred canons of the Church. On the Holy Mountain he prepared hundreds of monks and thousands of lay people for life in Christ.

After the service for the departed at the monastery's dependency in Stavroupoli, his funeral was served the next day, the Monday of the Holy Spirit, at Gregoriou. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.