Elder Adrianos of Sinai on Elder Paisios the Hagiorite

 

I came across on the internet, on a website, a testimony of a dialogue between Elder Adrianos and Elder Paisios.

The two Fathers were acquainted through their common presence on the Holy Mountain, and there was mutual esteem and respect between them; indeed, for a short time they had practiced asceticism together on Mount Sinai! And indeed, the last time they met was shortly before Elder Paisios fell asleep, at Souroti; he was ill in bed, and as soon as he learned that Elder Adrianos had come, he got up and brought him a small portion of a holy relic of Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, which he had promised him!

I had heard the Elder say that Elder Paisios had a holy lived experience.

However, there was always a disagreement between them regarding his stance toward Ecumenism and toward the Old Calendarists! A characteristic example: in 1997 Elder Adrianos had visited Elder Paisios, and among other things he says to him: I think Patriarch Demetrios is pro-papist, only to receive the answer: He is not; the poor man does not know!

Obviously, what is mentioned below in the dialogue must have taken place at Sinai, the last time Elder Paisios visited it, where the photograph is from as well!

The Elder would rebuke these situations with courage and boldness, and it would be interesting if the one who wrote it had included the whole dialogue and not something rendered elegantly!

The Elder would have said: Why did you go and make a prostration before this traitor to Orthodoxy!

If the Elder had indeed received this answer, he never believed it, since he had often mentioned this incident of the Elder’s meeting with Bartholomew, criticizing it.

Or else he accepted it and reacted to the “What was I to do?” which Elder Paisios said!

For another time as well, in ’89 on the Holy Mountain, he had urged him to speak loudly about Ecumenism, that is, with boldness, and to rebuke it, only to receive the answer: I cannot, because they will drive me away!

Here I will mention what Elder Adrianos did when he found himself in a similar situation, when Patriarch Demetrios had visited Sinai! At the assembly of the Fathers, in front of everyone, the Elder rose from his place and approached the patriarch, saying to him, while taking hold of his staff with his hand: Your Beatitude, with this staff which our Church has entrusted to you, drive the heretics far away from Orthodoxy and from our homeland, waving it meaningfully, among other things!

* * *

Fr. Theophanes of St. Sabbas Monastery, who has been a monk at St. Sabbas for decades, for almost 40 years now, discussed this matter with a pilgrimage guide, who has now fallen asleep, has departed this life, Mrs. Lemonia, and he would tell us this: that this Mrs. Lemonia, the pilgrimage guide who would go on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, found herself before an exchange between Saint Paisios and Elder Andrianos of Mount Sinai, who knew one another because they had practiced asceticism together, regardless of the fact that Elder Andrianos ultimately took his walling-off very far and ended up in another ecclesiastical community. In any case, Elder Andrianos complained to Saint Paisios when he saw him... How did you meet with Bartholomew and give this impression? And the Saint said to him: Well, brother, they dragged me along; I did not want to go. They led me from here and there and brought me before him. What was I to do?

This exchange, then, was conveyed to us, and I hand it on to you publicly as well. This is how I know it, and, if I remember correctly, spiritual children of his on the Holy Mountain have also confirmed it.

 

Source: shared (in Greek) in the “ΓΕΡΟΝΤΑΣ ΑΔΡΙΑΝΌΣ Ο ΣΙΝΑΙΤΗΣ 1926-2004” Facebook group on July 1, 2026.