Meet the Mount Athos monks living at Simonos Petra monastery

Mount Athos, a verdant peninsula in northern Greece, has been a center of Christian Orthodox monasticism for more than 1,000 years.

The all-male autonomous community, known in Greek as Agion Oros, or Holy Mountain, is no stranger to non-Greeks. Of its 20 monasteries, one is Russian, one is Bulgarian and one is Serbian, and the presence of monks from other nations is not unusual.

But it is in one monastery — Simonos Petra — that the greatest range of nationalities reside.

Here is a look at four of Simonos Petra’s monks, and how they view Mount Athos:

Archimandrite Eliseos, 74: Greek

Abbot of Simonos Petra since 2000, Eliseos has been living in the monastery since 1973.

On Mount Athos: “Truly Mount Athos spiritually has no borders. It is a place, a center of Christian monasticism. Not just now, since a long time ago. And it has the name Agion Oros (Holy Mountain).

And indeed, spiritually we cannot say it has borders. And this is proven through its survival through the centuries, that Mount Athos … has a sacred mission to unite people in peaceful coexistence, where between them there will be true relationships, love and harmonious cooperation.”Father Isaiah, 50: Chinese, born in Vietnam

Isaiah has been living in Simonos Petra since 2006, arriving there from an affiliated monastery in France as part of a spiritual quest.

On what brought him to Mount Athos: “It was in essence a deep searching of spiritual life, which is the answer for the meaning of life. And I have searched for that since my youth. Because I am a diaspora Chinese and I left Vietnam where I was born as a refugee and then we were accepted with my family in Switzerland and I grew up there.

And in that Swiss environment, I was trying to understand what I’m doing, where I’m going, what is the meaning of life. And in searching, I found some answers through virtue, and this virtue was connected with the face of Orthodoxy.”

Father Makarios, 73: French

Makarios has been living in Simonos Petra since 1979, after beginning a spiritual quest triggered by the 1968 student uprisings in Paris.

On what brought him to Mount Athos: “Initially it is the search for truth. I am of the generation of 1968 in Paris, where everyone was thinking of revolution, of political revolution. With some friends, we felt that the problem the young people had back then was not political, that it was spiritual, that our society had forgotten the meaning of tradition, of the holiness of God.

… I found in an intellectual search that in the end, fulfillment, the fulfilment of truth, is in Christianity, but in the initial Christianity, in the fathers of the Church, in the Apostles. And while searching, I found that this was not just a reference, a nostalgia of the past, but that it exists, it lives in the Orthodox Church.”

Father Serafeim, 46: Syrian-Lebanese

Serafeim has been living in Simonos Petra since 2010.

On what Mount Athos means to him: “The Holy Mountain is a place, I’d say, where you truly find spiritual peace. You see, monasticism has always sought peaceful places to find itself and thus to seek God. The Holy Mountain is primarily a place which for many centuries has kept this character.” COSTAS KANTOURIS, MOUNT ATHOS, MDT/AP