The life of St Arsenios of Cappadocia
Among the many children he baptized in Farasa across those decades was an infant he named after himself, a boy who would grow up to become known to the whole Church as the Elder Paisios of Mount Athos.
Arsenios foretold, before it happened, the forced exchange of populations that would empty Farasa of its Christian people, and when the order for that exodus came in 1924, the aged priest led his community on a journey of some four hundred miles on foot across Anatolia to reach Greek soil. He died in peace only two days after the crossing, on the tenth of November, 1924, at the age of eighty-three, having urged those gathered around him to care above all for the soul rather than for the body that returns to dust. He was formally recognized as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1986, and Paisios, who held his memory in deep reverence, later wrote an account of his life for others to read.
