Venerable Gerasimos of Kefalonia

Saint Gerasimos of Kefalonia (born George, c. 1509) came from the noble Byzantine Notaras family of Trikala, Peloponnese — his grandfather Luke Notaras was the last Grand Duke of Byzantium. At twenty he left home for Zakynthos, then received tonsure with the great schema on Mount Athos. With his elders' blessing he made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Sinai, Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria and Egypt, was ordained deacon and priest by Patriarch Germanus of Jerusalem, and served twelve years at the Holy Sepulchre. After a forty-day desert fast he settled on Kefalonia, founding a women's monastery at Omala, which he guided for thirty years in labor, fasting and prayer. He became renowned for delivering the island from drought and for healing serious and mental illnesses — he is still invoked as patron of the mentally afflicted. He reposed on August 15, 1579, the Feast of the Dormition; his relics remain incorrupt. He was glorified by Patriarch Cyril Lucaris of Constantinople in 1622.