Leontios of Iviron

Leontios of Iviron, with the secular name Basil Varellas, was born in 1880 at Galatista in Chalkidiki and was left fatherless in childhood. His mother took the five children to Thessaloniki to educate them. His elder brother was a pharmacist in the pharmacy of Gabriel Pentzikis, father of the writer Nikos Pentzikis. One day young Basil was left alone in the pharmacy and gave a customer a medicine from an envelope, and his brother, returning, learned with horror that the envelope contained poison; he ran to prevent the harm. Basil, in despair, closed the pharmacy and left for his village. On the road he met monks from Iviron going to Athos, who took him with them, saying that the Mother of God Portaitissa would comfort him.

He stayed briefly in a Russian cell at Karyes and on New Year's Day 1899 entered Iviron as a novice. Later a family friend told him that his brother had prevented the customer in time and the poison had not been used, but Basil had bowed before the Portaitissa and made firm decisions. He was tonsured a monk in 1903. He was a diligent and obedient servant, for many years superior of his monastery, full of goodwill and love toward the brothers, loving and valuing the monks of the cells.

Three days before his death he sensed his end: he asked for Holy Unction and gave the fathers his last counsels: to love the monastery, to venerate the Portaitissa, to progress spiritually and to have love among themselves. To his disciples he said, "Death does not frighten me, I have awaited it. Soon I will stand before our Lord. Pray that I may have a good defence." He departed leaning by the window of his cell, gazing at the endless sea and at the eternity for which he had striven all his life. He reposed in the Lord on 1 February 1964, of heart disease. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.