Venerable Sabba the New

Savvas, baptized Vasilios, was born in 1862 at Herakleitsa in Eastern Thrace. At twelve he secretly left home for Mount Athos, where at the skete of St Anne he learned icon painting and Byzantine chant. From 1887 he lived in the Holy Land, at the monastery of St George of Choziba and as a hermit, and there became a monk and priest.

He later served the convent of the Holy Trinity on Aegina, where he painted the first icon of St Nektarios. From 1925 he was priest and spiritual father of the convent of All Saints on Kalymnos, and he died there on 7 April 1948 (some sources say 1947). He was canonized in 1992 and is the patron saint of Kalymnos.