On January 9, 1995 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and eleven members of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in an Encyclical numbered the Hieromonk Athanasios Parios (+ 1813) among the Saints of the Church, to be commemorated on the day of his repose, June 24th. Two months later the Holy Synod of Greece met and concurred with the Encyclical of the Patriarchate with their own Encyclical, dated March 24, 1995.
A year and three months after the official recognition of Athanasios as a Saint by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, the foundations of a church in honor of Saint Athanasios Parios were laid in the village of Kostos on the island of Paros, where Saint Athanasios was born in 1721.
Metropolitan Ambrose of Paros and Naxos laid the foundations of the church in honor of Saint Athanasios. This took place in the context of the Scholarly Convention which took place from the 16th to the 19th of September in 1996, in commemoration of the 1600 years that had passed since the Church of Panagia Ekatontapyliani of Paros was built. The consecration of the Church of Saint Athanasios in Kostos took place on June 25, 2005 by the same Metropolitan (see video below).
