Charalambos of Simonopetra

Saint Charalambos of Simonopetra, a venerable monk, was born in 1891 at Vourla near Smyrna in Asia Minor, to Panagiotis and Evangelia Kafadakis. In his youth he worked in farming. In 1925 he was ordained deacon at Elassona by Metropolitan Kallinikos, and in 1928 he came to Simonopetra. On 6 April 1930, Great Saturday, he was tonsured into the great schema together with the monk Ioakeim by the abbot Hieronymos (died 1957). The next year he was ordained priest. In 1937 he left the monastery and returned after two years. On 15 August 1941 he took on the abbacy, was removed in 1949 and returned as abbot in 1954, remaining until his death.

He was a zealot of the Athonite traditions, the typikon and the canons of Orthodoxy, and in 1964 he signed, with many Athonite fathers, a declaration against all unionists and ecumenists. He was marked by meekness, asceticism, patience and a quiet spirit, a lover of the services. Once, at a service in the Cell of Saint Nicholas, frogs kept him from praying at night; he rebuked them and they were silent all night. In his cell he kept a skull to remember death. Before his death they brought him the hand of Saint Mary Magdalene, preserved incorrupt and warm; he venerated it and departed to the heavenly dwellings. He reposed in the Lord on 23 May 1973. He is honoured by the faithful, without synodal canonization.