Pachomios of Karyes

Pachomios of Karyes, with the secular name George P. Davos, was born in 1892 in Rafti, Gortynia. He came young to the Holy Mountain and settled at the hut of Saint Basil at Kapsala of Pantokratoros, where the venerable Theophilos the Myrrh-⁠Gusher (d. 1548), the venerable Gerasimos of Kefalonia (d. 1579) and the venerable Nikodemos the Hagiorite (d. 1809) had lived and been buried. The elder of the hut was the hieromonk Gregory from Lesbos. After the elders' repose he went to the skete of Saint Demetrius of Vatopedi, then for a time to the cell of Saint Andrew, of Saint Paul's, at Karyes, under the Kollyvas Onouphrios.

At last he settled in the cell of the Holy Unmercenaries of Gregoriou at Karyes, where he had a good brotherhood. He lived with his brother, the hieromonk Panteleimon (d. 1990), for years chief secretary of the Holy Community, with the hieromonk Akakios the Confessor and with the iconographers Chrysostom and Theophilos, who created the known icon-⁠painting house of the Pachomaioi. At first they made white woollen undershirts, preferred in winter by the Athonites of old. Pachomios was also reader at the Protaton, with the typikarios Dorotheos (d. 1966), his friend.

He was learned, very devout and a faithful keeper of the Kollyvades tradition. Being in Athens for an obedience of his cell, he fell suddenly ill and died in hospital on 21 January 1968. His body could not be taken to Athos, so he was buried in the cemetery of the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian at Papagou, beside the grave of his friend Dorotheos. When his bones were exhumed in 1993, those present smelled a fragrance in the cemetery, in the courtyard and in the monastery church, and at the Trisagion the chandelier and the lamp of Saint John the Theologian moved by themselves. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.