Father Tolotos, who grew up in a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece and died at the age of 82, lived his entire life without seeing women, airplanes or automatics.
Believed to have been born in 1856 and orphaned when his mother died shortly after his birth, Mihailo Tolotos was adopted by Orthodox monks at a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, where he was raised by church officials.
Tolotos only learned about the existence of women from his peers and from descriptions in books.
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Tolotos lived according to the strict rules of Mount Athos in Aynoroz, where Orthodox monks have lived for almost a thousand years and women have been banned since 1045.
In addition to women, female animals are also forbidden to enter the area, but only cats are not included in this prohibition.
Tolotos never left Mount Athos for decades and therefore never saw a woman in his life. Tolotos, who died in 1938 at the age of 82, was buried with a special funeral ceremony by all the monks living on Mount Athos, who believed that he was the only man in the world who died without knowing what a woman looked like.
In a newspaper clipping dated October 29, 1938, the following statements were made about Tolotos, who was mentioned with the title ‘The Priest who died without ever seeing a woman’:
In his 82 years of life, Mihailo Toloto, who had never seen a woman, died at the Monastery of Mount Athos in Greece. He had never seen an automobile, a movie or an airplane. His mother died when he was born and he grew up in a monastery where no woman ever entered, Athens reported.
Mount Athos is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracts thousands of visitors every year, but women are not allowed to enter the mountain. This ban has been in force for more than a thousand years. Women are not even allowed to get closer than 500 meters to the shore of the peninsula. Another claim about the ban is that the Virgin Mary came to the shore of Aynoroz because her ship went astray while trying to sail to Cyprus, and as a result of her admiration for this island, she prayed to her son and asked that the island be given to her, and Jesus accepted this request, and for this reason, Aynoroz is still called “the garden of the mother of God” today, and for this reason, it is believed that only Mary should represent the female gender on the island.
Of the 20 monasteries in the region, 17 are Greek and the other 3 are Serbian, Bulgarian and Russian.
