The Reverend Eldress Porphyria, Abbess of the Holy Monastery of Saint Symeon the Stylite, Lebanon

Eldress Porfyria is the Abbess of the Holy Monastery of Saint Symeon the Stylite in Northern Lebanon, under the Patriarchate of Antioch. She is a university graduate specializing in accounting and has studied theological sciences in Beirut. She has served as Abbess for approximately fifteen years, offering spiritual guidance to the monastic sisterhood.

Before assuming the abbacy, she served for many years in the Metropolis of Beirut as head of the catechetical schools, offering systematic work in pastoral care and church education.

Within the framework of her monastic formation, with the blessing of her spiritual father—then Archimandrite Ephraim, now Metropolitan of Tripoli (Lebanon)—she traveled to Greece and was hosted for a period at the Holy Coenobium of Ormylia, in order to become personally acquainted with the typikon and spirit of coenobitic life.

During her stay there, she came into substantial contact with the teaching and spiritual legacy of Elder Aimilianos. After her return to Lebanon, she undertook the founding and organization of the Holy Monastery of Saint Symeon the Stylite, where to this day efforts are made to live and transmit the spirit of Elder Aimilianos within the monastic sisterhood.