St Kosmas of Aitolia

Born in Aitolia in western Greece, Kosmas studied at the Athonite academy and became a monk of the Philotheou monastery on Mount Athos. Grieving that his people, after three centuries of Ottoman rule, were sinking into illiteracy and losing the faith, he received the blessing of the Patriarch and set out on foot as a missionary through Greece, Epirus, and Albania. For nearly twenty years he preached in village squares beneath great wooden crosses, in speech so simple that shepherds wept, urging love of enemies, the founding of schools, and baptismal life; he is credited with establishing over two hundred schools and countless charitable customs. 'My Christ,' he taught, 'left us love and unity.' His prophecies, remembered and collected, are still repeated in Greece. Slandered to the Ottoman authorities, he was seized and hanged in Albania in 1779, blessing his executioners. He was canonized in 1961 as the Equal-to-the-Apostles and father of the Greek nation's rebirth.