Varlaam of New Skete

Hieromonk Varlaam of the New Skete was an Athonite elder, iconographer and devout celebrant of the Divine Liturgy, who lived more than six decades on the Holy Mountain and reposed on 14 July 1994. He is honoured by the faithful as a man pleasing to God, though he has not been formally numbered among the saints. Monk Moses the Athonite included him in his Great Gerontikon of twentieth-⁠century Athonites.

He was born in 1910 at Anastasi near Kalavryta in the Peloponnese, and in the world his name was Theodore Marangos, son of Andrew. In 1928 he came to the Kalyva of Saint George at the New Skete, a dependency of the Monastery of Saint Paul, and the following year he was tonsured a monk. He was ordained deacon in 1934 and priest in 1938. In this kalyva he lived the monastic life together with his brother, Monk Theodosios (1887-1970), and his uncles, Theodosios the Sinaite and George (d. 1957).

Father Varlaam was a fine iconographer and a reverent celebrant. He was strict with himself in the monastic life: during vigils, services and above all the Divine Liturgy he never sat in his stall, and even in deep old age he prayed for hours standing.

He possessed the virtue of hospitality to the highest degree. At the kalyva of the Great Martyr George, passing pilgrims, beggars, the ragged and the poor were all received without distinction, with much love and care. Hieromonk Nikodemos, the present elder of the kalyva, relates that once a young man staying there with his father went swimming and fishing against his father's wishes. Father Varlaam told him that the fish of disobedience are not eaten even by cats, and the cat would not touch them, though it ate another fish at once. A layman who still visits the skete has confirmed the story.

Father Varlaam reposed on 14 July 1994 at the Monastery of the Holy Theodores in Kalavryta, where he had gone with his nephew, Hieromonk George.