Nikephoros the Leper

Venerable Nikephoros the Leper was a Greek monk, himself ill with leprosy, who lived in the leper hospital on Chios and then in the one at Athens, and who fell asleep in the Lord on 4 January 1964, at the age of seventy-⁠four. The Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate glorified him on 1 December 2012.

In the world he was Nicholas Tzanakakis, born in 1890 in a mountain village of Chania, Crete, to pious peasant parents. His parents died when he was small, and his grandfather took charge of him. At thirteen he moved to Chania as a barber's apprentice. Soon the first signs of Hansen's disease (leprosy) appeared. Lepers were forcibly confined on the island of Spinalonga, so at about sixteen Nicholas fled by ship to Egypt, to Alexandria, where he again worked in a barber's shop. The disease advanced, especially on his hands and face, and on a cleric's advice he went to Chios, where there was a hospital for lepers run by the hieromonk Anthimos Vagianos, later known as Saint Anthimos of Chios (15 February). He arrived in 1914, at twenty-⁠four. In the chapel of Saint Lazarus there was the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God Panagia Ypakoe ("Obedience"). In the spiritual atmosphere there he opened his heart to faith and longed for a life of prayer. After two years Anthimos judged him ready and tonsured him a monk with the name Nikephoros.

The disease advanced without suitable drugs (a treatment was found in 1947), but Nikephoros lived in unbroken obedience to his spiritual father, in strict fasting, working in the gardens. He recorded the miracles of Saint Anthimos which he had seen with his own eyes, many of them deliverances of people possessed by spirits. He prayed at night for hours with countless prostrations, quarrelled with no one, injured no one's heart, and was the leading chanter of the church; as he lost his sight, he chanted the troparia and the Epistle from memory. In 1957 the Chios hospital was closed and the remaining patients, including Nikephoros, then almost sixty-⁠seven, were moved to the leper home of Saint Barbara at Aigaleo near Athens. His limbs and eyes were deeply changed by the disease. There lived Father Eumenios, cured of leprosy by the new medicines but who stayed among the patients to care for them. He became Nikephoros's disciple, for the Lord had given Nikephoros many gifts for his patience.

Crowds came to the humble cell of the leper Nikephoros to receive his prayers. Witnesses say that, though ill and covered with wounds, he did not complain but showed great patience; he had the gift of consoling those who were sad and bore everything gently and smiling. His face, eaten away by the disease, shone. To visitors he would say: "My children, do you pray? And how do you pray? Pray with the Jesus Prayer." Three years after his death his relics were exhumed and found fragrant. Father Eumenios and other faithful have reported many miracles at the call of his name.

He is commemorated on 4 January.