Thomas of St Paul's

Thomas of St Paul's, with the secular name Theodore Sideridis, was born in 1881 at Tripoli near Trebizond. Among the brothers of Saint Paul's Monastery he stood out for goodness, simplicity, faith and ready obedience. He came to the monastery in 1934, at fifty-⁠three, and was tonsured into the great schema in 1935. Before coming he had visited the Athonite monasteries, but because of his age they did not keep him. Venerating the icons of each monastery's iconostasis, he heard from the icon of the Mother of God: "Not here, at the next monastery." At Saint Paul's the icon said to him: "Here."

At Pascha of 1936, after "Christ is risen," the abbot Seraphim (d. 1960) sent him to the ossuary to say "Christ is risen" to the bones of the fathers. Without a second thought he went and said it aloud. Then the bones creaked, a skull rose about a metre and answered loudly: "Truly the Lord is risen." Father Thomas thought the event natural and that it always happened so. At another time, being quite inexperienced, he was told to prepare the dough for the monastery's bread in the absence of the responsible monk; he prayed to the Mother of God to enlighten him and saw a woman in black kneading the dough, shaping the loaves and putting them in the oven. The fathers had never eaten such sweet bread.

He reposed in the Lord on 8 February 1949. Abbot Seraphim said that his was a soul full of grace. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.