Early Life and Exile
Sophia Saoulidi was born in 1883 in the Trebizond region of Pontus, then within the Ottoman Empire, to parents named Amanatios and Maria. The sources record that she married Jordan Hortokoridou in 1907 and that her family life was cut short: her young son died in early childhood, and her husband disappeared during the forced conscriptions into labor battalions that took many Greeks and Armenians in those years.
By tradition her spiritual struggle began while she was still in Pontus, where she withdrew to a mountain apart from her relatives. The sources relate that Saint George appeared to her there, warning of a coming persecution so that she might alert the villagers to flee. With the upheavals that followed the First World War, she came to Greece in the exchange of populations between Turkey and Greece, settling in the Kastoria region of Northern Greece.
Ascetic Life at Kleisoura
Sophia settled at the Monastery of the Nativity of the Theotokos at Kleisoura, by tradition directed there by the Theotokos, and placed herself under the guidance of the abbot Gregorios Magdalis, an Athonite monk. There she lived in conditions of extreme simplicity, by the accounts dwelling within the fireplace of the monastery kitchen.
Her ascetic regimen, as the sources describe it, included strict fasting, very little sleep, and long hours of prayer through the night. She wore plain, worn clothing and lived in deep poverty, giving away to the poor the money and gifts that visitors brought to her. Over the decades she became a counselor to the many pilgrims who came seeking her.
Repose, Relics, and Glorification
Sophia reposed on 6 May 1974 and was buried at the Monastery of Kleisoura, where her relics are venerated by the faithful.
On 4 October 2011 the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, under Patriarch Bartholomew, formally numbered her among the saints, fixing her feast on 6 May, the day of her repose. On 27 November 2011 the monastery celebrated her glorification, processing her holy relics and icon during the services before a large gathering of the faithful.
