Nicholas of Xiropotamou

Nicholas of Xiropotamou, a hieromonk, with the secular name Athanasios Karalis, was born in 1895 in the village of Monastiraki in Aetolia-⁠Acarnania. He came to Saint Paul's Monastery in 1925. On 16 December 1927 he was tonsured a monk and received the name Nicholas. On 23 December 1927 he was ordained deacon. At the feast of the founder, Saint Paul of Xeropotamou, 28 July 1932, he was ordained priest. On 14 February 1935 he left for Xeropotamou Monastery. On 24 March 1951 he was raised to superior.

In the ten years he lived at Saint Paul's and the thirty-⁠five he stayed at Xeropotamou he showed a faultless, blameless, whole, priestly and compunctionate life. He was much distinguished by his love of the services. He had a springing, genuine, unadorned, unwrinkled reverence, which adorned and distinguished him everywhere and always. He departed to the Lord his God and ours on 5 December 1970, on the eve of the feast of Saint Nicholas the wonderworker, which the devout hieromonk, lover of God and the saints, celebrated. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.