Georgios Aggelopoulos was born to a poor family in Dimitsana, Greece, in the year 1746. Like so many of his contemporaries, he seemed destined for a fairly forgettable life comprised mostly of hard work, limited rewards, and devotion to the Church--this ended up being true but not quite in the way that we might expect. Georgios received a decent education but his own natural talents and aptitudes propelled him forward so that he was able to study in Athens for two years. His uncle was an influential man in Smyrna, however, and arranged for Georgios to receive a high quality education there not because of any ability to pay but rather because of his surprising intellect and in spite of his many obstacles. Georgios' family expected that he would go on to a career in academic circles and this would have been a surprising career for one of his background. Yet, it was his commitment to the Church and monastic spirituality that would hold most strongly when presented with other callings. Georgios became a monk and took the name of Gregory. As a monk he finished his education before becoming first a deacon and eventually an archdeacon in the Church in Smyrna.

It was in January of 1819 that he returned to Constantinople for the third and final time. As the Christian leadership of a resented Christian population, he continued to anger the Ottoman leadership. In March of 1821, Greek citizens began to violently resist Ottoman domination of Greece and blood was spilled by both sides. Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II demanded that Gregory suppress the Greek violence against Turks in Greece. Gregory did what he could to make for peace but it did not come. As the Ecumenical Patriarch and the ethnarch of Greeks in Ottoman Turkey, he was held responsible for the violence and the uprisings that would later be known as the beginning of the Greek revolution. Shortly after worship ended on Easter Sunday in the year 1821, Ottoman soldiers arrested Gregory from within the sanctuary of the church where he had just celebrated Easter. He was dragged to the edge of the city in his clerical vestments and hung from the gate in retribution for the acts perpetrated by the revolutionaries against the Ottoman authorities. His body hung there for three days as an example before being drug through the streets and being cast into the Bosphorous. His body was recovered by a sailor and given a Christian burial. In his memory, the main gates of the Patriarchate compound were welded shut in 1821 and have remained so since then.
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