Anastasios Kephalas (Greek: Αναστάσιος Κεφαλάς), later Nectarios, was born on 1 October 1846 in Selymbria, to a poor family.

On November 7, 1876, he became a monk, at age 30, in the Monastery of Nea Moni, for he had long wished to embrace the ascetic life.

He was consecrated Metropolitan bishop of Pentapolis (an ancient Diocese in Cyrenaica, in what is now Libya) by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Sophronios in 1889.

[5] In December 1908, at the age of 62, Nectarios resigned from his post as school director and withdrew to the Holy Trinity Convent on Aegina, where he lived out the rest of his life as a monk.

[citation needed] Nectarios died on November 8, 1920, at the age of 74, following hospitalization for prostate cancer and two months of treatment.

His body was taken to the Holy Trinity Convent, where he was buried by his best friend Savvas of Kalymnos, who later painted the first icon of Nectarios.