Joseph of Pantokratoros

Joseph of Pantokratoros, with the secular name John Koukoutos, was born in 1862 at Kydonies in Asia Minor. In 1894 he came and stayed at Pantokratoros Monastery, under the obedience of the elder confessor Paisios. He was tonsured a monk in 1898 and ordained deacon and priest in 1899. In 1909 he was made superior of his monastery. In 1911 he was sent to the monastery's dependency of Saint Nicholas in his native town, which the monastery had held since the early eighteenth century. He was to be the last steward of the dependency. He worked there zealously, diligently and humanely, with particular success. His end was martyric: he was slaughtered by the Turks in 1922.

A document of Pantokratoros Monastery says: "Its last brother, Joseph of Pantokratoros, superior from Kydonies, of the Koukoutos family, continuing from 1909 the third six-⁠year term of his mission, met a cruel death in October 1922, the terrible year of the national disaster, carried off and slaughtered by the Turks together with the Metropolitan of Kydonies of blessed memory, Gregory Orologas, or buried in a chaotic pit together with the hierarch and the rest of the clergy of Kydonies, as the newspapers then wrote." Together with him the monk Hilarion of Pantokratoros, with whom he lived at the dependency, also suffered. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.