Panaretos of Pantokratoros

Panaretos of Pantokratoros, with the secular name Panteleimon Vasileiadis, was born in 1901 at Prousa in Asia Minor. He came to Pantokratoros Monastery in 1938 and was tonsured a monk the next year. He reposed in the Lord on 28 October 1969. These are the few things the monastery's register records about him.

People who knew him describe him as tall, lean, wrinkled and hardened, whose gaze, cheerful face and few measured words made them think. The Pantokratoros fathers of old held him light-⁠minded and good only for errands. They held him to blame for the fire that burned a fine wing of the monastery in 1948. He never used an animal. Every day he went to and fro to Karyes, loaded, carrying the mail and whatever else the fathers asked of him, obeying everyone. He did this route for years, winter and summer, in frost and heat. One winter, returning to the monastery from Karyes and believing he would manage to pass the monastery gate before sunset, a strong snowstorm caught him, which blocked him, and he could hardly see to advance. Everything around grew misty and from so much... a modest nun in black appeared to him with a lantern, going before him and guiding him. She led him to the entrance of the monastery. Amazed, he did not understand what exactly was happening. How did a woman walk on the forbidden Holy Mountain? The devout and humble monk Panaretos was saved by the Mother of God herself. The fathers at first doubted this wonderful event, but then understood that in the idiorrhythmic monastery a beloved child of the Mother of God had been kept for so many years, who continued his willing service until he fell ill. He reposed on 28 October 1969. He fell asleep and did not wake; he died of cardiac arrest. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.