Kallinikos

Kallinikos, titular Bishop of Diopolis, was killed at Heraklion in Crete in June 1821, in the church of St Menas, together with the Metropolitan of Crete and other bishops. The Ecumenical Patriarchate numbered him among the saints in the year 2000 as a hieromartyr. The Church commemorates him on 23 June with the other martyrs of Crete of 1821.

Our sources say nothing about his life beyond his title as Bishop of Diopolis, a see without a flock, who was in Heraklion in those days. When the Turks burst into the church where the synod of the bishops was meeting, Metropolitan Gerasimos was killed first, and after him the bishops of Knossos, Chersonisos and Sitia, and Kallinikos of Diopolis. Priests, Athonite monks and nearly three hundred of the faithful fell with them.

The Church of Crete remembers him among the ten hierarchs who bore witness in 1821. He should not be confused with Kallinikos of Kydonia, who died of torments at Chania.