Gerontios of Prodromou Skete

Gerontios of Prodromou Skete, the Romanian skete of the Forerunner, with the secular name George Batsiou (Batiu), was born in 1901 in the village of Baika in the district of Falticeni, in Orthodox Romania. As a young man he came to the Garden of the Mother of God, where many of his compatriots lived. He lived in the hut of the Annunciation of Pantokratoros in Lower Kapsala, where he was tonsured a monk in 1927 with the name Gideon. The next year he entered the Romanian skete of the Forerunner (Prodromou), where he received the great schema with the name Gerontios. The fathers of the skete were distinguished by their ascetic mind, works of virtue and repentance.

Among them were the Dikaios Matthew, who had come to the skete in his youth and fought hard for the survival of the skete in many adverse conditions; the blind Elder Bartholomew, who said with compunction the Midnight Office and the Six Psalms daily by heart; and the deacon Arcadius, who came to the skete at twelve, loved the services greatly and went to church with great difficulty, with two canes, distinguished by his devotion to the Mother of God and his patience in bodily pains. Father Damaskinos of Gregoriou relates that Elder Gerontios, despite his age, ran everywhere with willingness to help, though he limped from a blow. He was short and stooped. The Dikaios Petronios calls him obedient, humble, a fighter. He spent about five decades in the skete, and for the last twenty years never left it.

When someone went to his cell to tell him to come and knocked on the door, he did not answer; he opened the door and found him lying with the Psalter. He thought he had dozed off from tiredness and called him again. Elder Gerontios did not obey, for the first and last time. He obeyed the heavenly call to leave earthly things for heavenly ones and departed to receive the reward of his labours, like a little bird, without any warning, to the joy of his Lord, whom he had served all his life with goodwill, seeing him in the faces of his dear brothers. He reposed in the Lord on 5 June 1984. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.