Helen Bekiary lived in Sinope, a city on the Black Sea coast of the Ottoman Empire, in a minority Greek community in the 1700s and was a member of a Christian family. As the story goes, when she was fifteen years old, she had gone to the marketplace to buy embroidery thread, when the local governor, Ukuzoglu Pasha, caught sight of her, and had her brought to his house. He tried to assault her twice, but something like an invisible wall prevented him from reaching her. Hoping to succeed later, he imprisoned her, but she managed to escape back to her parents’ house. The pasha threatened the Sinope Council of Elders (the leading members of the Greek Christian community) that, if they didn’t hand her over to him, he would have their entire community massacred. They persuaded her father to deliver her to the pasha. She began reciting the Six Psalms and all the other prayers that she had memorized as he continued trying unsuccessfully to assault her. Once the pasha finally gave up, he had her jailed and tortured to death. As young as she was, she was apparently a person of such powerful faith, that her prayers were astonishingly effective, while she was alive and even after death. We can assume this because, almost as soon as they were retrieved, her relics began to work miracles.
During the Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey in 1924, her holy head was taken to Greece and placed in the Church of St. Marina in Ano Toumba, Thessaloniki, where it still resides.
She is commemorated on November 1, and s considered one of the four patron saints of the Metropolis of Michalovce and Košice in Slovakia, and honored as the patron saint of young Slovakian women and men.
Prayer
Most fragrant flower of purity, the pride and divine daughter of Sinope, Virgin-Martyr of Christ, Helen most pure, who struggled steadfastly and overcame the enemy with the power of faith, pray for God’s mercy on all our souls!