Philaret the Gardener

Saint Philaret the Gardener (Philaret of Calabria, Philaret of Seminara), a holy monk, was born at Palermo in 1020, into a family of Calabrian origin that the Saracens had taken to Sicily and later freed, and reposed on 6 April 1070 at Palmi in Calabria. He was a Basilian abbot and ascetic, venerated as a saint by both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church.

His family named him Philip, in honor of a holy priest from Thrace who came on behalf of the pope to preach at Agira. In 1040 he returned to Calabria. He lived at Reggio and, at about twenty-⁠five, came to his parents at Sinopoli. Then he resolved to enter the Basilian monastery of Saint Elias near Seminara, at the foot of Mount Aulinas (today Mount Saint Elias), above the town of Palmi, the most esteemed in the region. Under the guidance of Abbot Orestes, who renamed him Philaret, "lover of virtue", he spent there the last twenty-⁠five years of his life as a herdsman, farm worker, monk and ascetic.

He gave generously of his time, strength, money and the fruits of his labor to the poor and, in the end, worn out, fell gravely ill at about fifty and died on the morning of 6 April 1070. Within a short time his veneration spread in the region, and his name was linked with the monastery from 1072. After a long period of oblivion, the monastery of Saints Elias and Philaret was reopened in 2005, as a convent of nuns, under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Malta of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. He is commemorated on 6 April (new style).