TARPON SPRINGS — A small icon of St. Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and fishermen, that left Tarpon Springs more than a century ago has set off a dispute between the city’s current and former mayors over whether it should come back.
Mayor John Koulianos says he tracked down the icon on a trip to the Greek island of Aegina and started an effort to bring it home. Former Mayor Costa Vatikiotis, whose family comes from Aegina, says the icon belongs where it is. He has told city leaders he wants no part of what he called a “self-serving effort.”
Immigrants from Aegina presented the painting in 1910 to parishioners of the original wooden St. Nicholas Greek Church in Tarpon Springs. According to Koulianos, the icon was damaged in a fire and sent back to Greece in 1923 to be restored, but it never returned.
Koulianos said Basi Moutsatsos, a St. Petersburg College professor, first told him about the icon. His wife’s grandfather was born on Aegina, and while the couple was vacationing in Greece, they took a short boat ride from the port outside Athens to visit the island and meet its mayor.
“I asked the mayor if he knew of the icon,” Koulianos said. “He made a phone call to a local priest who believed he knew where it was located.”
The two mayors met the priest at a small church, the Panagitsa, where the icon hung on the back wall of the chapel. Koulianos said inscriptions in its bottom corners confirmed it was the right piece. The one on the left, dated 1910, marks its presentation to the Tarpon Springs church. The one on the right records its return to Aegina in 1923 after the fire.
“The priest acknowledged that this icon belonged to Tarpon Springs and should return,” Koulianos said.
The priest told him his bishop would have to approve, Koulianos said, and that only a bishop in America could speak with his bishop. Koulianos then met with Metropolitan Sebastian of Atlanta and turned the matter over to him to work out the formalities.
Koulianos said it was suggested he pursue the icon as one of the city’s historical treasures, which is why he and the city got involved.
Vatikiotis disputes nearly every point. In an email to Koulianos and city commissioners, he said he was “not involved in any way” in the effort and asked “what business the Tarpon Springs City government has in meddling in religious matters.”
He argued the icon is neither lost nor the property of Tarpon Springs. The 1923 inscription does not suggest the move was temporary, he said, and to his knowledge no one in the past 100 years has sought its return, including Tarpon Springs families of Aeginetan descent who later moved back to the island.
Vatikiotis said returning the icon never came up during his official visit to Aegina in 2024. At the time, he said, the church’s priest, the Rev. Nikolaos Garyfallou, told him that if the icon ever left the island, it would be for “maintenance” and then come back.
“Maybe he has changed his mind,” Vatikiotis wrote, “if, in fact, he was understood correctly, or he understood what he was being asked.”
He added that the priest, the church board, the local bishop and the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece would all have to approve before the icon could leave the country.
“Letting the icon go will need a good reason,” he wrote. “I do not know that a good reason exists.”
Vatikiotis said he believes most people on Aegina have not yet heard of Tarpon Springs’ plans and would object to the icon being described as lost.
“It is venerated and has been for over 100 years by the people of Aegina, including me, a descendant,” he wrote. “Whatever the outcome of this folly, there are going to be many unhappy people in Aegina.”
Aegina’s mayor, meanwhile, describes the icon’s trip as a visit. In a recent letter to Koulianos, Mayor Ioannis Zorbas confirmed he will come to Tarpon Springs on Jan. 6, 2027, with Father Nicholas to take part in the city’s Epiphany celebration and complete a sister-city ceremony between Aegina and Tarpon Springs.
“I am also very grateful for your efforts regarding the special visit of the icon of St. Nicholas to your Cathedral,” Zorbas wrote. “This will undoubtedly make our visit even more meaningful and memorable.”