Vissarion of the Agathonos

Saint Vissarion of the Agathonos (in the world Andreas Korkoliakos, Petalidi in Messenia, 1908 - 22 January 1991) was a Greek hieromonk of the twentieth century, of the Agathonos monastery near Lamia, in central Greece, known first for his monastic life and for his religious, social and charitable work, and then, from 2006, because his body was found incorrupt. He was placed among the saints by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on 14 June 2022. He is commemorated on 22 January, the day of his repose.

Life

Andreas Korkoliakos was born at Petalidi, in Messenia, in 1908, and there learned his first letters. At eighteen he went to Kalamata, where he became bound to spiritual people and resolved to become a cleric (the English source says only that he became a monk in his teenage years). He was tonsured a monk and received the name Vissarion. Then he was ordained deacon and priest and received the rank of archimandrite. In 1935, at the call of the Metropolitan of Thessaliotis, from Messenia, Ezekiel (Stroumbis), he went to Karditsa, where he began to serve, marked by philanthropy. After the Liberation and the Civil War he left Karditsa and, after 1955, entered the Agathonos monastery, near Lamia, influenced by Fr. Germanos Dimakos, also a Peloponnesian. There he served as confessor of the monastery and at the same time went to the hospitals of Lamia, saw the sick, comforted them and heard their confessions. He was regarded by those who knew him as an especially kind-⁠hearted cleric, with a spirit of humanity.

End of life and discovery of the body

After serious health problems, he died of pulmonary edema on 22 January 1991 at the "Sotiria" hospital, at the age of eighty-⁠three. His body was taken to the Agathonos monastery, but because of a violent storm could not be buried in the cemetery and was in the end buried in the Baptistery. In March 2006 he was exhumed because of a subsidence on the eastern side of the monastery. His coffin was found in excellent condition. The monks took it to the cemetery to remove the elder's bones, but when they opened the lid they found that the body was incorrupt. The event caused sensation and amazement not only in Phthiotis but in all Greece, especially after the event was shown on television. The relics of Vissarion were examined for the first time by the retired professor and well-⁠known Athens coroner Dr. Panagiotis Giamarelos, who spoke on television of an extraordinary and inexplicable event; above all his words about Vissarion's very well preserved body and about the face being so untouched that it "was ready to talk to you" caused a stir. The Bishop of Phthiotis, Nicholas, said that the Church should not hurry to announce any sanctity of the monk Vissarion and that the question should be discussed in the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, at Athens. However, after the media made the event known, hundreds of believers from Phthiotis and other parts of Greece came to the Agathonos monastery to venerate Vissarion's body.

Reactions

The question of the incorruption of the remains caused a tumult in the scientific community in Greece. The coroner Nikos Karakoukis spoke of the possibility of natural mummification because of the place in which he was buried: the lack of oxygen in the burial place and the dryness in the tomb could cause mummification of the body. The retired coroner Giamarelos proposed to Bishop Nicholas that the body remain in a shrine, in a particular place in the monastery, another two or three years, to give a better idea, by its preservation or decomposition, of what it is. After a Greek tabloid published photographs of the relics, the president of the coroners, Karakoukis, asked the Bishop of Phthiotis to allow scientific examination by a team of coroners of the monk's body in order to publish a conclusion; he rejected the opinion of his colleague Giamarelos and spoke of a case with a logical explanation through forensic medicine.

Canonization

His placing among the saints of the Orthodox Church was done by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople on 14 June 2022, and on 31 August 2022 the ceremony of entry in the synaxarion and of its signing by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew took place. He is commemorated on 22 January, the date of his repose.