During its working session on Oct. 3, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate resolved to canonise Gerontissa Gavrilia Papaianni one day after marking her 126th birth anniversary.
The decision to canonise St. Gavrilia was initiated by Patriarch Bartholomew and announced by the Metropolis of Leros, Kalymnos, and Astypalaia, which made the relevant appeal to the Synod.
The Metropolis of Leros, Kalymnos and Astypalaia entrusted Metropolitan Kirill of Rhodes with the composition of the Saint’s service. The Metropolis has under its jurisdiction a monastery dedicated to the Holy Archangels on the Island of Leros, where the eldress reposed in the Lord and was buried.
Mother Gavrilia stood out for her boundless love for her neighbour, leading her to go to India and Africa to care for the sick. Known as the “Ascetic of Love” or the “Mother of Joy”, she saw in every person, regardless of race or creed, the face of Christ.
Mother Gavrilia Papaianni
She was born in 1897 to a wealthy family from Constantinople, which had to move to Thessaloniki following the population exchange in 1923.
After studying in England, she opened a practice where she treated the poor for free and gave them a good part of the money earned. Interweaving work with the prayer of Jesus, she healed those who came to her.
After her mother’s death, she broke all ties with ordinary life and left with a garment on her and the Holy Scripture to India, where she devoted herself fully to serving the sick and the poor.
At 62, she entered monasticism in a monastery in Palestine. After receiving the monastic habit, she continued her missionary journeys to Africa and India but periodically retired to the monastery.
She spent the last 13 years of her life in Greece, first in a small apartment in Athens, then in a hermitage she founded on the island of Leros. There, in 1991, she received the great schema from the hands of Father Dionysios from the Athonite Skete of St. Ana and reposed in the Lord the following year, on March 28.
Photo source: orthodoxianewsagency.gr
