On the Thursday 15 April 2021 episode of the Greek late night talk show The 2nite Show, the well-known in Greece actor and film director Renos Haralambidis talked about how his miraculous birth took place through the intervention of Saint Irene Chrysovalantou. His real first and middle name is Irenaios Chrysovalantis, which testifies to the miracle.
While his parents were Greek villagers who went to find work in Germany, they tried through various means to have a child, going to the best hospitals, and this effort lasted fourteen years. It came to the point where his mother said to his father to leave her so he can marry someone else who would be able to give him a child. He did not leave her. The truth is that she had an issue that prevented her from having a child and it was irreversible.
They returned to Greece, his mother now 32 years old worked as a cleaner at a hospital and his father was a gardener. One day some women at the hospital who worked with his mother told her about Saint Irene Chrysovalantou, who miraculously helps couples have children despite not being able to. His parents at the time were not particularly religious, though they believed in God.
One afternoon his mother took a nap, and she had a vivid dream. A smiling woman dressed in black was standing outside a structure that looked like a castle, and the woman said to her:
"It is me you're looking for. Come and find me."
His mother told the details of her dream to the other women at the hospital, and they told her that she described the Monastery of Saint Irene Chrysovalantou at Lykovrisi in Attica. Soon after his parents went together to the Monastery to make a vow so his mother can become pregnant.
Time passed, but nothing happened and the vow was forgotten. Suddenly, she began to show signs of a pregnancy. But because she had documentation from doctors in Germany and Greece saying it was impossible for her to get pregnant, doctors ascribed her appearance to a phantom pregnancy. Back then in Greece they could only confirm a pregnancy through a visible sign and by hearing the heartbeat, so they had to wait some weeks to get a confirmation she was indeed pregnant. And his birth took place through a cesarean section so that no one could say he was adopted.
He begins talking about it at the 10:00 mark in the video below:
