Our Venerable Father Nikephoros the Leper, the Confessor and Wonderworker
1890 – 1964 · Cretan monk who bore leprosy with serene patience
A monk of Crete who bore leprosy for decades with serene patience and unceasing prayer, becoming a comfort to fellow sufferers.
Saint Nikephoros the Leper (born Nikolaos Tzanakakis) is one of the most fully documented of the modern saints — his life attested not only by hagiography but by photographs, the records of leper hospitals, and the recollections of those who knew him. He was born in 1890 in the village of Sirikari near Chania, on the island of Crete, then still under Ottoman rule, and lost his father as a child.
At about thirteen he began to show the signs of Hansen's disease (leprosy), which in that age carried a heavy stigma and usually meant isolation from society. To avoid detection he went as a youth to Alexandria in Egypt and worked there, but the disease advanced until it could no longer be hidden, and in 1914 he was sent to Spinalonga, the island leper colony off Crete.
At Spinalonga, and later through his spiritual father Saint Anthimus of Chios, he embraced a life of prayer, obedience, humility, and endurance, and received the monastic name Nikephoros. Though the disease gradually took his sight and disabled his hands and face, those around him marveled that he never complained, but bore decades of chronic pain with a serene and gentle peace.
When Spinalonga closed in 1957, Nikephoros was moved to the Saint Barbara anti-leprosy hospital in Athens, where he became a source of comfort and counsel to patients, staff, and the many who came to him — known especially for encouraging those who suffered illness, despair, loneliness, or fear. He reposed peacefully on January 4, 1964; devotion to him spread steadily, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate glorified him as a saint on November 30, 2012.
Where the ascetics of old withdrew to the desert, Nikephoros practiced holiness in leper colonies and hospital wards. His asceticism was not chosen solitude but imposed isolation and illness, borne without bitterness — a witness that sanctity is possible in the midst of severe physical suffering, and that the sickbed can become a place of prayer and of comfort to others.
Because photographs, hospital records, and living witnesses survive, his life offers a rare, closely attested example of Orthodox sanctity in the twentieth century. He lived through the Balkan Wars, two World Wars, occupation, and civil war, and through the medical revolution that finally emptied the leper colonies he had inhabited.
Since his glorification he has become one of the most beloved of the modern Greek saints, with many reported healings and a swiftly spreading veneration. He is turned to especially by the chronically ill, by people with disabilities, by hospital patients and their caregivers, and by all who bear isolation and pain.
Glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2012. Modern saint.