1716–1732
Saint Niketas of Nisyros
A young man from Nisyros whose family was forced to convert to Islam, who returned to the Christian faith and was martyred at seventeen.
Biography
Niketas was born in 1716 in Mandraki on Nisyros. When his father fell into disfavor with the Turks, the whole family converted to Islam and moved to Rhodes, where the boy, renamed Mehmet, later learned his true origin. At fourteen he went to the Nea Moni monastery on Chios and confessed his story, returning to the Christian faith.
When the Turks later discovered his identity, they tortured him for ten days and nights trying to make him recant, without success. Niketas answered, 'I am a Christian, my name is Niketas, and Niketas I will die,' and he was beheaded on Chios on 21 June 1732, at just seventeen years old.