Bishop Mark of Ephesus (AD 1392-1444)

Mark was born in Constantinople in 1392. He lived a consecrated spiritual life as a monk, and was eventually ordained the bishop of Ephesus (modern Selçuk). Mark was called the Pillar of Orthodoxy for standing against the Roman Catholic Church at the Council of Florence (1431–1449), opposing the primacy of the Roman Catholic Pope over the universal church, and rejecting the teaching of purgatory. He died in June 1444, at the age of fifty-two. His last words were “Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, into your hands I commit my spirit.”