Teleporio™ — Greek Island Travel Intelligence
Why do people ask saints for help?
Someone came here because they needed something. Understanding why — and what the Orthodox tradition actually teaches about this — transforms how you read ev…
Teleporio™ travel intelligence — Updated 2026-07-24
Look at the icons in a Greek church and you will see small silver or gold shapes hanging on them — boats, hearts, human figures, eyes. These are tamata: thank-offerings left by people who believe their prayer was answered. Someone came here asking. Someone came back to say thank you.
The question visitors often have
Travellers entering a Greek Orthodox church often notice something that can seem puzzling: people praying directly to images of saints, lighting candles before them, and leaving small objects of gratitude. To an outside observer, it can look as though the saints are being addressed as independent powers. This is an understandable misreading, and correcting it opens up the whole practice. The Orthodox tradition teaches something more specific and theologically careful.
What the Church actually teaches: intercession
In Orthodox Christian belief, asking a saint for help is not addressing the saint instead of God. It is asking the saint to pray to God on your behalf. This is called intercession — the same word used for any prayer offered on behalf of someone else. In the Orthodox understanding, the saints are not dead; they are alive in God, in a state of closeness to the divine that their lived faith achieved. Their prayers, in this understanding, are particularly effective — not because they have independent power, but because of their closeness to the one who does. The practice is theologically analogous to asking a trusted and faithful person, still living, to pray for you during a difficult time. The difference is that the saints are understood to be in an even closer relationship with God than any living person.
The tamata and the vow
The small silver and gold votive offerings you see hung on icons — called tamata — are physical expressions of the practice of vows and thanksgiving. A person facing difficulty might make a vow: 'If my child recovers, I will offer a tama to the saint who intercedes for him.' The tama — shaped like a child, a boat, a part of the body, a pair of eyes, a heart — represents the person, the situation or the thing they prayed for. When the hoped-for outcome occurs, the tama is brought to the church and hung before the icon as an act of thanks. The accumulated tamata on a much-loved icon in a pilgrimage church — layers upon layers of them — are a visual record of prayers that people felt were answered.
The emotional reality
Whatever one's own beliefs, the human reality expressed in this practice is accessible to anyone. People come to these churches in difficulty. They come with sick children, with lost boats, with missing family members, with illnesses they cannot cure and fears they cannot quiet. They come asking for the kind of help that medicine and planning cannot fully provide — the help of hope, of comfort, of the sense that someone is on their side. The candle lit in a dark church is not a magic act; it is a physical expression of a wish, a prayer, a need. Every culture has versions of this. In Greece, it takes a particular beautiful and ancient form.
What this means for a traveller
When you enter a Greek church and see someone praying before an icon, you are witnessing the continuation of a practice that has run without interruption in this landscape for roughly sixteen centuries. You do not need to share the faith to be moved by the depth of it. The icons are not decorations. The candles are not atmosphere. The tamata are not tourist curiosities. They are the material residue of a community's most serious human moments: the times when people needed something they could not provide for themselves. To see them clearly is to see Greece more completely.
What is certain — and what is interpretation
The Orthodox Christian theology of intercession is described here according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, drawn from official Orthodox sources. It is presented as religious belief and practice, not as a claim the article endorses or disputes. Cultural and emotional dimensions draw from widely published anthropological and travel writing about Greek Orthodox practice.
Go See It
Panagia Evangelistria, Tinos; Panagia Ekatontapiliani, Paros; any active Orthodox church
Tinos is the most important Marian pilgrimage site in Greece; its church of Panagia Evangelistria receives hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually, particularly around the feast of the Assumption (15 August). Arriving as an observer — quietly, respectfully — is entirely appropriate and deeply instructive.