Kyprianos of Stavrovouni

Hieromonk Kyprianos of Stavrovouni (in the world Kyriakos Hadjigeorgalli, 1878-1955), called Papa-⁠Kyprianos the Stavrovouniot, was a Greek Cypriot monk who lived as an ascetic in Cyprus and on the Holy Mountain and is regarded as one of the spiritual elders of his time. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.

He was born in 1878 in the small town of Dali, under British rule, into a peasant family, and received for that time a notable education: he finished the secondary school in Nicosia in only three years. He entered as a novice in 1905, aged twenty-⁠seven, at Stavrovouni Monastery, under the abbot Barnabas, and was tonsured with the name Kyprianos, then ordained hierodeacon and hieromonk. For many years he served in various obediences: parish priest at the metochion of Saint Barbara, alarm-⁠keeper, icon painter and worker in the monastery gardens. He left a rich collection of icons in the Renaissance style followed at that time at Stavrovouni and was the tireless organiser of the community's agricultural work.

About 1924, because of the monastery's material difficulties, he left for Athos with the monk Kyrillos. He stayed more than a year at Simonopetra, as parish priest, where he left the memory of a virtuous confessor, then went to the desert of Athos, to Katounakia, in the cell of Saint Gerasimos, and struggled about six months beside the elder Kallinikos the Hesychast (1853-1930), from whom he learned the prayer of the mind and the strict tradition of the Mountain. He returned to Cyprus in 1926 and was confessor of the monastery and of many people, working the monastery's land until 1944, when he was sixty-⁠six.

He was a very austere ascetic, a man of the prayer of the mind and a great faster: all year his cooked food was only without oil, he slept four hours a day and spent the rest in spiritual work. He served the Liturgy in a spirit of compunction, with closed eyes. He supported women's monasticism in Cyprus, among others the convents of Saint Anthony at Dherynia, Saint George at Alamanos and the Transfiguration at Kaimakli, and was a comforter and confessor to many people across the island. He was confessor of Archbishop Leontios of Cyprus and spiritual father of many, among them Elder Joseph of Vatopedi, who struggled under him at Stavrovouni until 1946. In 1955 he fell ill with cancer and fell asleep, after a month of hard trial, on 1 February 1955, aged seventy-⁠seven.