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| The house of St. Ephraim as it appeared before the collapse. |
The house in which the newly-revealed Saint Ephraim was born in 1384 in Trikala has collapsed after a long hard winter with lots of snow and heavy rains. This took place towards the end of February 2017.
According to oral tradition, Saint Ephraim, known in the world as Constantine Morphes, was born and lived his first years in this house, located on the banks of Lethaeos, at the height of "Aura". Indeed, the Metropolis of Trikke and Stagon had previously expressed its desire to build a small chapel there or close to it.
Opposite the house on the other side of the river lies the Church of Saint Stephen, where Saint Ephraim was baptized.
Saint Ephraim lived from 1384 to 1426. Orphaned of a father and one of seven children, in order to be saved from a mass kidnapping of children by Muslims he was sent to the Monastery of the Annunciation at the age of fourteen. He lived there till the age of eighteen as a novice. Then he was tonsured a monk and ordained a priest.
In 1416 Athens was occupied by the Turks and the Monastery experienced two disasters. During the first the Saint had been praying in a cave on the mountain, but at the second on 14 September 1425 they returned and they tortured Saint Ephraim with particular ferocity for eight and a half months. He was martyred on 5 May 1426 at the age of forty-two in Nea Makri. His holy relics were discovered through divine intervention in 1950; 524 years after his death. He was formally glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in March 2011.
