Athanasios Hamakiotis

Athanasios Hamakiotis (1891–1967) was a Greek hieromonk who served for decades as a parish priest in Attica and founded the Monastery of Panagia Faneromeni at Rodopoli. Born George Hamakiotis in 1891 in a mountain village of the Kalavryta district in the Peloponnese, he entered monastic life as a young man and spent his ministry chiefly in the area of Athens, where he became widely known as a confessor and spiritual father. He reposed on 17 August 1967.

By the account preserved in his biography, George Hamakiotis became a monastic novice at the age of fifteen and, after some seven years of studies, was tonsured a monk with the name Athanasios. He was ordained a deacon at the age of twenty-five and a priest in 1921. From 1931 he served at various churches in Athens, and in 1936 he was appointed rector of the Church of Panagia Neratziotissa in Maroussi (Amarousio). His long ministry there gave him the byname by which he is often remembered, 'the Elder of Neratziotissa.'

In the latter part of his life Athanasios built and established the small Monastery (Hesychasterion) of Panagia Faneromeni at Rodopoli in Attica, where he passed his final years. He reposed there on 17 August 1967 and was buried in the monastery he had founded. The Ecumenical Patriarchate formally numbered him among the saints by a decision of its Holy Synod on 16 November 2023, appointing his commemoration on 17 August, the day of his repose, and on 23 October, the day of the translation of his relics.