Saint Nectarios of Aegina (also Saint Nectarios of Pentapolis) is an early-20th-century Greek Orthodox saint. John Kiriakou says he identifies with Nectarios more closely than any other saint and carries his photograph in his wallet.[1][2] As a young bishop in Alexandria, Nectarios was beloved for identifying with the poor — giving away his shoes, cleaning the toilets of a seminary so an ailing janitor would not lose his job.[3] Jealous older priests, resentful of his rapid rise, spread a false rumor that he was having affairs with parishioners; he was driven out of his post in Pentapolis, Egypt, fired, sent back to Greece, and nearly starved, but forgave all of them from the beginning.[4][5][6] In a separate telling, Kiriakou dates the episode to around 1900 while Nectarios was Bishop of Alexandria, describes the false accusation as sexual relationships with nuns rather than parishioners, and says he was stripped of his bishopric and exiled to Aegina — yet expressed only forgiveness toward his accusers.[7] Kiriakou says that when everything collapsed around him and he faced espionage charges and 45 years in prison, he decided that if Nectarios could forgive his accusers, he would forgive his own — drawing the same comparison to Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King forgiving those who sought to ruin them.[8]
Kiriakou recounts the saint’s death around 1920: carried by donkey down the mountain on Aegina and sent to the Red Cross Hospital in Athens, Nectarios died beside a paralyzed farmer. When the nuns removed the saint’s sweater and laid it on the farmer’s bed, Kiriakou says, the man got up and walked — the first of the miracles that led the Patriarch of Alexandria to apologize and acknowledge the saint had been wronged.[9][10][11] He notes a 2020 film about Nectarios, Man of God.[9]
Visits to Aegina
Kiriakou says his closest relationship of any saint is with Nectarios, whom he keeps “as close to me as possible.”[12] He first visited the saint’s house and tomb on Aegina in 1998, soon after arriving in Greece, during a joint operation with his Greek intelligence counterparts; the team went to the island six hours early in case rough seas delayed the boat, and with time to spare one of the Greek officers asked whether he had ever seen Nectarios’s house, reminding him the saint had lived there. He has returned at least 15 times since.[12][13] In a separate telling of what he says is the same story, from early in his Athens posting, the outing to Aegina preceded an operation with the Greek intelligence service, and it was the head of Greek surveillance — a religious man — who suggested the visit to Nectarios’s house and convent.[14][15] At the tomb, lacking the small coin most visitors used for the candle box, Kiriakou dropped in a 5,000-drachma note worth about $20 or $24; he says the head of surveillance saw him make the offering, and the two men later learned that the officer had ordered the Greek service to keep surveillance off Kiriakou entirely, deciding he was “a good Christian boy” who meant them no harm.[16][17] Kiriakou also recounts a legend that putting an ear to Nectarios’s tomb lets you hear scratching from inside, said to be his cane — a sound Kiriakou says he personally heard, “clear as day.”[18]