The Pilgrimage of Panagia Soumela at Mount Vermio

The Pilgrimage of Panagia Soumela is the annual Dormition panegyris of Pontic Hellenism, held on 14 and 15 August at the shrine of Panagia Soumela above the village of Kastania on Mount Vermio, in the Imathia district of Macedonia. Thousands of pilgrims from across Greece and the Pontic diaspora ascend to the shrine for the feast. The organising society headed its 2025 programme the 1613th panegyris; by that count the 2026 feast is the 1614th.

The shrine continues the monastery of Panagia Soumela at Mount Mela near Trebizond, founded at the end of the 4th century by the monks Barnabas and Sophronios. Its icon of the Theotokos, a Hodegetria attributed by tradition to Luke the Evangelist, was buried at the monastery when the Greeks of Pontus left in 1923, recovered from the site in 1931, and kept in Athens for two decades.

The Panagia Soumela Society, founded in 1951 by Filon Ktenidis and keeping offices in Thessaloniki and at Kastania, raised the new shrine on land granted by the Ministry of Agriculture and the community of Kastania. The icon was ceded to the society in 1952 with the consent of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and enthroned at Kastania on the feast of 15 August that year. Since 1966 the pilgrimage site has been administered by the Panagia Soumela Foundation, established by royal decree.

The panegyris follows a two-day order. On the eve the icon is venerated through the day, and a great festal vespers closes with a litany of the icon; on 15 August liturgies begin before dawn, a pontifical concelebration is served, and the icon is carried in official procession, with a memorial service and a wreath laid at the bust of Alexandros Ypsilantis. The 2025 services were presided over by Metropolitan Panteleimon of Veroia, Naousa and Kampania. The shrine maintains its own guesthouses for pilgrims on the mountain.