Savvas of Kalymnos

Saint Savvas the New of Kalymnos was born in 1862 in Herakleia in Eastern Thrace, then under Ottoman rule, and received the baptismal name Constantine. Ethnically Greek, he was drawn from an early age to the monastic life of the Eastern Orthodox Church. As a young man he left Thrace for Mount Athos, where he was tonsured a monk and given the name Savvas. On the Holy Mountain he was trained in the ascetic and liturgical traditions of Athonite monasticism, including prayer, fasting, and the craft of iconography, which he practiced throughout his later ministry.

After his formation on Athos, Savvas spent a period in the Holy Land, living as an ascetic and serving the Church in Palestine; there he was ordained to the priesthood and became a hieromonk. In the early twentieth century he became closely associated with Saint Nektarios of Aegina, assisting at the convent of the Holy Trinity which Nektarios had founded on that island and sharing in the spiritual care of the nuns. After Nektarios died in 1920, Orthodox tradition holds that Savvas painted an early icon of the reposed hierarch, an expression of both his skill as an iconographer and his reverence for his spiritual father.

In the following years Savvas settled on the island of Kalymnos in the Dodecanese, taking up residence at the Convent of All Saints (Agioi Pantes). He remained there for the rest of his life as chaplain and elder to the sisterhood, celebrating the sacraments, hearing confessions, and offering spiritual counsel. Among the people of Kalymnos he was known as a humble wonderworking priest-monk, sought out for healing of body and soul and for discernment. Accounts of his life describe him as living in great simplicity, devoted to the Divine Liturgy and to the Jesus Prayer, and as a father to both the nuns and the lay faithful of the island.

Savvas died on 7 April 1948 on Kalymnos. Subsequent uncovering of his relics found them incorrupt, which confirmed and extended his local cult. In 1992 the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople formally numbered him among the saints of the Orthodox Church. He is commemorated on 7 April and is venerated as the patron saint of Kalymnos; his relics at the Convent of All Saints continue to attract pilgrims. In Orthodox usage he is often called Savvas the New, to distinguish him from earlier saints of the same name, notably Savvas the Sanctified.