Nestor of Karyes

Nestor of Karyes, with the secular name Zacharias Vassalos, was born in 1872 in the village of Dafnedes in Mylopotamos, Crete. As a young man he reached the Holy Mountain and became a monk in the cell of Saint Demetrius of Dionysiou Monastery at Karyes. He worked as an icon painter and was ordained deacon and priest there.

After a divine command, given through a radiant light that was repeated to assure him, and with the blessing of his elder, he returned to his homeland in 1935 and built, near Rethymno, on a rocky hill called Koumbes, in the ruins of an old monastery, the Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour. There he continued his struggle and icon painting. Soon a sisterhood gathered, whose confessor he was; thanks to him the monastery became a spiritual centre, as it continues to be today. Many received absolution under his stole, and alms. During the occupation a gravely ill child was saved through his prayer, and once, himself near death, he made the sign of the cross over a dying child in hospital, who was healed at once.

He reposed in the Lord on 4 January 1957. After his relics were exhumed, his bones, kept at the Koumbes monastery, gave off a fragrance. The abbess of the monastery says that after fifty years his presence is often felt. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.