 Nektarios of Aegina In 1885, Nektarios was ordained as Metropolitan of Pentapolis of Sophronios' vicar in Cairo. In 1890, Nektarios traveled to Athens, Greece, and accepted a position of "preacher" from the Ministry of Church Affairs. In 1894, Nektarios was asked by the Ministry to assume the role as director of the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School. He quickly brought peace to a school that had once been in a state of disturbance and, in 1908, retired as director. His greatest desire was to rebuild an old convent and establish a monastery for the nuns in Aegina, Greece. Nektarios succeeded and later served as a priest at the monastery in Aegina. On November 8, 1920, Nektarios died, due to the suffering of prostatitus for many months. After his death, a strange fragrance began to emit from the body of Nektarios. At the chapel and before his burial at the monastery, many noticed the sweet smelling fragrance that drenched his hair and beard. Five months after his death, the nuns decided to build him a marble tomb at the monastery. They opened the grave to find that the body of Nektarios had not yet begun to decay, it was incorrupt, and still smelling of the sweet fragrance. The grave was opened after three years and again after seven years, to find the body in the same fragrant condition. When the Archbishop of Athens, Chrysostomos, personally examined the body after another seven years, he found that it was emitting an even stronger fragrance than before. He pronounced the body as a sanctified one or saint. During his life and especially after his death, miracles and miraculous cures have come to be associated to St. Nektarios. By 1968, there were over six hundred reported miracles and cures, with a great number of them said to be incurable by the best physicians. The cures were a result of either prayer to St. Nektarios, by the placement of his icon near the patient, or by the annointment of the patient with oil taken from the sacred lamp that burns at his tomb at the monastery in Aegina.  Close Window |