Joseph of the Koutloumousiou Skete

Joseph of the Koutloumousiou Skete, called Joseph the Cypriot, with the secular name John Chatzipanagiotou, the son of Nicholas and Panagiota, was born in 1886 in the village of Rizokarpaso in Karpasia, now under Turkish occupation. He came to the Holy Mountain in 1902 and never went back to Cyprus, but he loved it, prayed for it and remembered it: "I have never taken Cyprus out of my heart, because it gave birth to saints." He had learned a little carpentry in his village and intended to work as a carpenter, but in the faces of the monks he met God: "Here, here is God," he said, and decided to become a monk. He passed through various places on Athos and ended at the hut of Saint Ioannikios the Great in the skete of Saint Panteleimon, which belongs to Koutloumousiou, under the virtuous Elder Ioannikios (d. 1909), where he received the great schema.

At a vigil in Karakallou Monastery, at the feast of the Holy Apostles, while praying, he saw the Apostle Paul standing by the bishop's throne: "With his bald head and his little beard, I recognized him from the icon, preaching... I did not know whether I was awake or asleep. The only thing I remember of his words is: 'Even if a man lives one day on the earth, if he is not careful, he can be condemned...' That word has remained like dregs in my heart." More than seventy years later he told it as if it were last night's event.

He passed through many trials: voluntary and involuntary hunger, poverty, want, hardship. Frequent illnesses and many temptations tired him but did not discourage him. He accepted everything as from God. He had great devotion to the Mother of God, whom he called "Beauty of the beautiful," and kept by his bed a small icon of the Economissa: "What I ask of her, she manages for me." He said the prayer rope to the Glykophilousa of Philotheou, to protect him, to the Economissa of the Lavra, to sustain him, to the Paramythia of Vatopedi, to console him in his sorrows. For sixty years he walked with crutches, but he was never idle; at a hundred he climbed on the roof to repair its tiles. The last fifty years of his life he lived in the neighbouring hut of Saint Nicholas. He read the Psalter, the Gospel and the Apostle; these three he liked. Past a hundred years, he wondered why God did not take him. He reposed in the Lord on the Saturday of the Departed before Pentecost, 30 May 1992, and was buried in the skete cemetery on Pentecost Sunday. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.