Saint Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvite (born Evangelos Baϊraktaris in 1906) grew up in a poor but devout family in Euboia, shaped early by hardship, work, and a deep love for the lives of the saints. At twelve he secretly left for Mount Athos, where he lived in strict obedience at the hermitage of Saint George in Kavsokalyvia and was tonsured a monk at fourteen. Gifted with clairvoyance and profound spiritual discernment, he later returned to Euboia due to illness and was ordained a priest at twenty, taking the name Porphyrios. For decades he served as a spiritual father—first in rural monasteries, then for thirty‑three years at the Athens Polyclinic—offering tireless pastoral care to the suffering and the sick.

In 1955 he settled at the Monastery of Saint Nicholas in Kallisia, and in 1979 he moved to Milesi, where he fulfilled his lifelong dream of building both a church and a convent. Despite severe illness and blindness, he oversaw the construction of the Monastery of the Transfiguration, living first in a trailer and then in a simple cell until the katholikon’s cornerstone was laid in 1990. Near the end of his life he returned quietly to his beloved Kavsokalyvia on Mount Athos, where he reposed on December 2, 1991, praying the words of Christ: “that they all may be one.” He was canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2013.