AVGOROU: The elder Gideon Katounakiotis of Mount Athos (PICTURES)

The story as well as the life of the elder Gideon Katounakiotis of Cyprus, originally from Avgorou, is highlighted by his family and specifically by Stavros Klatsias who is his brother, on the occasion of the Love Meal for needy families of the Center of Offer and Love he recently offered.

The elder Gideon Katounakiotis, left in 1945 for Mount Athos and since then he has never been born. For 72 years he lived with the Virgin Mary and the Archangels as he said.

Through his letters he embraced heartily and urged his brothers to constantly do alms. One of his exhortations: "Almsgiving covers a multitude of sins, to send all your money to Paradise through Almsgiving"

In November 2017 he moved to paradise.

Saint Ephraim Katounakiotis once said about Elder Gideon:

When I was still with the elders and I was serving them, a little above our cell, there was an Elder, Father Gideon (a Cypriot by origin) who, when his Elder "slept", was left alone.

He did his job, and because he was a "thin man" he did not want to come to our cell, without a specific reason and to bother us. One afternoon, I hear someone knocking on a tin with a stick.

Going out, I see this Elder outside his cell and I say to him: "Elder, do you want something?". And he answers me: "What I want, now you can not understand. You will understand later ".

When all the fathers "slept" and I was living alone, then I understood why Gero-Gideon was hitting the tin. He wanted to hear a human voice. And that was a consolation.

One afternoon, I went out and shouted, "Ehh!" Father Gideon! " And he says to me: "Here is an Elder!" "Now I understand why you were hitting the tin."

May his memory live forever."

Another pilgrim wrote:

"I have been visiting the elder Gideon Katounakiotis every Easter since 2010. He had the eyes of a small child in purity.

It has never been released on Mount Athos since 1945. With the same clothes all these years, I see the rags that tied his knees because he had osteoarthritis and it hurt a lot.

One year I gave him osteoflex for his knees and a black jacket for the cold winter. The next year I found them intact where I had placed them. Perfect landlessness and indifference for every earthly man, a truly free man, 70 years alone with the company of the Virgin Mary and the Archangels as he told me. His rosary is always in his hand "

"Raise your hands high and say the wish" he advised me.

In October 2017 he moved to Paradise. Let us have his wish. "