Athens, February 9, 2023
St. Emilianos (left), St. Dimitrios (right). Photo imgre.gr
The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece is calling on the Patriarchate of Constantinople to canonize several locally venerated saints for Churchwide veneration.
Following the initiative of Metropolitan David of Grevena, the Synod resolved to petition for the broader canonization of Hieromartyr Metropolitan Emilianos of Grevena and those martyred with him (+1911), and New Martyr Dimitirios, a monk from Samarina (+1808), reports the Orthodoxia News Agency.
These martyrs of the Turkish Yoke are already celebrated as saints in the Metropolis of Greneva, which is among the dioceses of the New Lands that are part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople but administered as part of the Church of Greece.
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The official site of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Greneva provides biographical information on the two saints:
Metropolitan Emilianos (Lazaridis) was born in 1877 in Permata, a Turkish-speaking Greek Orthodox town in the province of Iconium in Asia Minor.
He studied at the theological school in Halki and then served as a priest in both Greece and Turkey. He was distinguished for his kindness and piety.
During his time in Thessaloniki, he collaborated with the Consul Lambros Koromilas and the warrior Athanasios Souliotis in the Macedonian Struggle—a series of social, political, and military conflicts mainly fought between Greek and Bulgarian subjects of Ottoman Macedonia between 1893 and 1912.
He was later consecrated Bishop of Petra, assistant to the Metropolitan of Pelagonia. In March 1910, he was elected Metropolitan of Greneva, where he continued his struggles for Macedonian Hellenism and strengthened support for the Orthodox.
In his efforts to support his flock, he toured all the villages of the province, preaching the Gospel and encouraging the local Christians, and ensuring the building and maintenance of churches and Greek schools.
For this reason, he was targeted by the Young Turks, and on Saturday, October 1, 1911, he was murdered on his way to church in the village of Grindades, together with his deacon and his guide.
His body was found in the forest where he was murdered after five days, and he was buried on Sunday, October 8 in Greneva.
The inhabitants of Greneva honor him as a hiero-ethnomartyr. The village of Grindades was renamed Emilianos, and Shinovo to Despotis, in his honor, as he was martyred in the forest between them. A church and cenotaph were erected on the exact spot of his martyrdom, where a Liturgy and Trisagion are served on the first Saturday of every year.
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Monk Dimitrios, the pillar and stronghold of the enslaved Greeks, was born in Samarina of Pindos at the end of the 18th century.
He became a monk at the monastery in his homeland, where he purified his body and soul through prayer and fasting. After the suppression of the revolution against the Turkish Albanians in 1808, St. Dimitrios left his monastery and went around the villages preaching the Gospel and teaching patience in the face of suffering.
After he was slandered to the authorities, he was imprisoned and tortured. The executioners pierced his arms with spikes and stuck them in his fingernails and toenails. They also clamped his head in a vise. Then he was hung upside down and burned with fire from below.
Seeing the monk’s bravery, one Turk came to believe in Christ and was martyred.
Then the ruler, Ali Pasha, build St. Dimitrios inside a wall, leaving only his head exposed, to prolong the torture. After ten days, he surrendered his spirit to God, in the year 1808.
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