Mount Athos – Place of Holiness

Mount Athos is the ultimate place of holiness. Because the Athonite community is the only Orthodox monastic community that has remained active since its founding. Life and tradition on Mount Athos are uninterrupted.

There has been no period, from the founding of Mount Athos until today, when Mount Athos interrupted its mission within the Church and the world.

This mission is to create saints, to transmit the living tradition of theosis to modern man. Mount Athos has twenty Holy Monasteries.

There were periods of great prosperity for Mount Athos when it numbered over 10.000 monks, but also periods of poverty.

During the celebrations of the millennium of Mount Athos in 1963, that is, when the thousand years were celebrated after the founding of the first great monastery of Mount Athos, the Holy Monastery of the Great Lavra, the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras had stated characteristically: “Along with the millennium, we also celebrate the relics of Mount Athos.” And he had said this, of course, because a great shortage of relics threatened Mount Athos.

Today, however, miraculously, all the monasteries of Mount Athos are manned, all are communal and most of them have many monks. Today, Mount Athos has over 2.500 monks.