The life of St Nektarios of Aegina
He taught for a time on the island of Chios, where he was tonsured a monk and then ordained deacon, and later completed theological studies in Athens before going to Alexandria, where he was ordained priest and, within a few years, made Metropolitan of Pentapolis by the Patriarch of Alexandria. His swift rise and evident holiness drew envy among some of the clergy around him, who convinced the aging Patriarch that Nectarios harbored ambitions on his own throne. On this false suspicion he was dismissed from his post in 1890 and sent from Egypt without trial or explanation, and false rumors of misconduct followed him back to Greece, leaving him for a time destitute and unable to find work worthy of a bishop. He never sought to defend himself or answer his accusers.
In time he found steady work directing a school for priests in Athens, and in his last years he founded and helped build with his own hands a convent on the island of Aegina, enduring one more wave of slander there before it was disproven. He died in 1920 after a long illness, in a hospital ward set aside for the poor. He was formally canonized in 1961, and in 1998 the Church of Alexandria itself asked his forgiveness and restored the honor it had once stripped from him.
