Gerontissa Gavrielia

Gerontissa Gavrielia
Born Avrilia Papayannis
(1897-10-15)15 October 1897
Constantinople,
Ottoman Empire
Died 28 March 1992(1992-03-28) (aged 94)
Leros, Greece
Nationality Greek
Other names
  • Elder Gabriela
  • Mother Gabriela
Occupation
  • Physiotherapist
  • Greek Orthodox nun/elder

Gerontissa Gavrielia (Elder Gabriela), also known as Mother Gavrielia[1] (15 October 1897 – 28 March 1992) was a Greek Orthodox nun, known for her care of the poor and sick. She was the second woman to be admitted to a Greek university and was a trained physiotherapist prior to taking up her religious calling at the age of 60.

Biography

Avrilia Papayannis[1] was born on 15 October (2 October O.S.) 1897 N.S. in Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire[2] as the youngest child of Helias and Victoria Papayannis,[3] a wealthy Greek family. She grew up in Constantinople and lived there until her family was deported during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey and sent to Thessaloniki. She entered the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, becoming the second woman ever admitted to a Greek university,[1] where she earned a degree in philosophy. She had previously graduated with a degree in botany at a Swiss university.[4] In 1932, she moved to Athens and cared for nursing home residents[1] until 1938 when she moved to England to study podiatry and physiotherapy, where she remained until the end of World War II.[2]

Career

In 1945, Papayannis returned to Greece and began working with the American Farm School and Friends Relief Service in Thessaloniki,[5][2] until 1947, when she moved to Athens and opened a physiotherapy practice. For a decade she operated her office using funds from her paying clients to provide assistance to the poor. Upon the death of her mother, in 1954, she took a vow of poverty and gave all her worldly possessions away. The following year,[1] she moved to India to work with the poor and assist Baba Amte in his work with leper communities in India.[3] After four years of providing free physiotherapy to the poor, Papayannis went to the Himalayan Mountains, spending eleven months in solitude as a hermit.[1] She then traveled to Landour where she met an American woman, who arranged for her to go to the monastery headed by Father Theodosius in Bethany, in the Holy Land in 1960.[6] She arrived at the Bethany Community of the Resurrection of the Lord[notes 1] and after accepting tonsure became a nun. After her three-year novitiate, Papayannis took the name Gavrielia.[1]

Sister Gavrielia was sent to the Taizé Community in France by the Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople, though her assignment there was brief. She was then sent to the United States, where she toured ethnic Greek communities in seventeen states and accompanied many mentally ill patients to psychiatric hospitals in Europe.[9] After nearly a decade of touring, speaking, and helping the sick, she was sent to East Africa for three years to do missionary work.[1] Following a brief assignment in Germany, Sister Gavrielia was sent back to India,[9] where she remained for three years. In 1979, she was given use of an Athens apartment and became a "Gerontissa" (elder), counseling disciples and helping the sick over the next ten years. Near the end of her life, she retreated to a hermitage in Aegina,[1] but when she developed Hodgkin's disease she returned to Athens. After a miraculous healing, she left Athens two years before her death and moved to the island of Leros.[9] Gerontissa Gavrielia died on Leros on 28 March, 1992.[2]

Legacy

In 1996 a biography of her life entitled I Askitiki tis Agapis was published in Greek,[2] in 1999 the book was translated into English,[10] and in 2000 into Russian.[2] It has since had 14 Greek editions, 2 English editions, and has been translated into Arabic, French and Serbian.[11]

Notes

  1. ↑ The Russian Orthodox archive account calls this monastery the "Monastery of Mary and Martha",[2] Brady calls it the "Monastery of St. Lazarus"[1] and the Orthodox Wiki calls it "the Monastery of Sts Mary and Martha in Bethany".[3] The Greek Orthodox Church and St. Lazarus Monastery were not built until 1965.[7] According to the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission of Jerusalem, two British women, who became Orthodox tonsured nuns in 1932, took the religious names Mary and Martha. They organized a religious community in Bethany, called the Bethany Community of the Resurrection of the Lord. Soon after its founding, the church authorities moved the community to Gethsemane where they became attached to the Church of Mary Magdalene. Though its name officially remains the Bethany Community of the Resurrection of the Lord, it is often identified as the Convent of Mary Magdalene.[8]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Brady, John (Fall 2004). "Mother Gavrilia: "A Holocaust to His Love"". In Communion (Alkmaar, The Netherlands: Orthodox Peace Fellowship) (35). Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Gerontissa (Elder) Gabrielia". Washington, D.C.: Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 "Gabrielia (Papayannis)". OrthodoxWiki. 11 February 2015. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  4. ↑ Karellos 2001, p. 23.
  5. ↑ Marder 1979, p. 215.
  6. ↑ Karellos 2001, p. 25.
  7. ↑ Murphy-O'Connor 2008, p. 228.
  8. ↑ "Bethany Community of the Resurrection of the Lord". Jerusalem, Israel: Russian Ecclesiastical Mission. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  9. 1 2 3 Karellos 2001, pp. 25–26.
  10. ↑ Nun Gavrilia 1999.
  11. ↑ Karellos 2001, p. 21.

Bibliography

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