Gregory Zoumis

Gregory Zoumis, archimandrite and abbot of Docheiariou Monastery on the Holy Mountain, reposed on 22 October 2018. He was born on the island of Paros, where his first teachers were monks of Longovarda Monastery and his spiritual father was Elder Philotheos Zervakos, now in the calendar of the Church of Greece. From the age of twelve he was guided spiritually by Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos, who later tonsured him a monk.

In 1980 he came to the Holy Mountain with his small brotherhood from a monastery on the Greek mainland, on the advice of Elder Ephraim of Katounakia: "You, Father Gregory, go to Docheiariou." At that time almost all the Athonite monasteries were idiorrhythmic; at Docheiariou the monastery became cenobitic again, and he was elected abbot. He did not compel the old monks who had lived alone for years to take on perfect obedience, but for newcomers obedience was the basic rule. He also founded a convent at Sochos near Thessaloniki, to which the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God Gorgoepekoos, the monastery's chief treasure, is carried each year.

A Russian monk who lived beside him for seven years describes him as severe with himself, a man of the old school, who never had a mobile phone or a computer and wished to keep monasticism close to that of the ancient fathers. He took obedience and work as the foundation, saying, after Amphilochios, that life has two oars, worship and obedience. At work he was strict, in his cell gentle; in his youth he carried stones and concrete himself, and later he directed the monastery's building projects, in which there was no difference between a simple monk and a priest. He introduced himself to pilgrims as a labourer or gardener. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.