Saint Savvas was born in 1862 in Herakleitsa, Eastern Thrace the only child of Constantinos and Smaragda both devout people, who were very poor.

As a young boy he had a calling for the monastic life and secretly left without his parents knowing for Mount Athos at the age of twelve where he entered St. Anne's Skete.

He arrived in 1887 and entered the monastery of St. George Hozeva and lived there for seventeen years as a hermit in the deserted and rugged cliffs.

Due to the irregularities caused by the raids of the Arabs in the Holy Land, and health reasons, St Savvas was forced to leave.

Soon after the repose of St. Nektarios, the number of pilgrims to the convent increased rapidly due to the growing reputation of the saint as a miracle-worker.

This greatly disrupted the quiet life that Saint Savvas loved and with the encouragement of the influential wealthy Kalymnian Gerasimos Zervos,[2] he departed in 1925 and went to the island of Kalymnos.

He remained an ardent spiritual striver until the end of life and practiced extreme forms of self-restraint with regard to food, drink, and sleep.

When he was on the point of death taking his last breath, suddenly he received strength, brought his blessed small hands together, and clapped them repeatedly saying his last holy words: "The Lord!

After 10 years when the saint's grave was opened, a heavenly fragrance emanated from the grave which covered the whole island of Kalymnos, this phenomenon was witnessed by many, including the local bishop who upsettingly and initially was refusing to grant permission to the nuns to exhume his relics (when after three years of his death St Savvas miraculously appeared to the nuns ordering them to exhume him as the side of his head was getting wet being buried with his head at the base of a water deposit-sterna in Greek) and only after following years of torment and dreams did the then Bishop Isidoros believe and allowed his relics to be exhumed, finding his whole body incorrupt and intact apart from a small section on his skull where a patch of his skin deteriorated because of the water leaking on him- as the Saint had said to the nuns!)