More than 20 years before the canonization of Saint Kosmas Aitolos by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 1960's, a book was written about him by Phanes Michalopoulos that was published in 1940 and greatly contributed to the spread of his popularity that led to his canonization. In the epilogue to this book, he records the following testimony of someone who met Saint Kosmas as a child and what impression he had of him. Michalopoulos writes:
They asked a pious old man from Epirus who was 100 years old, who died in a retirement home in Ioannina in 1872, what was the deepest joy of his soul in his entire life. The old man answered:
They asked a pious old man from Epirus who was 100 years old, who died in a retirement home in Ioannina in 1872, what was the deepest joy of his soul in his entire life. The old man answered:
"When I was little, I heard Father Kosmas teach and I kissed his hand."