The kind, modest, gentle, simple, humble and quiet Simonopetra abbot Charalambis was also from Asia Minor, like most of the older fathers of the holy monastery of Simonos Petras. He was born to pious parents, Panagiotis and Evangelia Kafadakis, in Vourla, Smyrna in 1891. He was involved in agriculture as a child.
In 1925 he was ordained a deacon in Elassona by Metropolitan Kallinikos of Elassona († 1957). In 1928 he came to the ethereal Simonopetra. On 6.4.1930, the day of Holy Saturday, he was tonsured a monk, along with the monk Joachim, by the renowned abbot Hieronymus († 1957). The following year he was ordained a presbyter by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Miletoupole († 1956). In 1937 he left the monastery. He returned after two years. On 15.8.1941 he assumed abbotship. In 1949 he retired. He assumed the abbotship again in 1954, in which he remained until his death.
Abbot Charalambis was a zealot for the Athonite traditions, the ecclesiastical formalities and the canons of our Orthodox faith. In 1964, he signed, together with many other Athonite fathers, a proclamation against all pro-union, pro-papal and ecumenist elements. In January, 1964, after the common prayer between Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI the holy monastery of Simonopetra stopped commemorating the Ecumenical Patriarch. At the time of the venerable abbot's death in 1973, he was contemplating; along with the other monastery fathers, breaking communion with the Holy Community of Mount Athos in imitation of the course of action taken by the Esphigmenou monastery the previous year. He was distinguished for his gentleness, his asceticism, his patience, his peaceful and friendly spirit. When he had once gone to officiate in the monastery's Cell, Saint Nicholas of Dontas, and at night the frogs would not let him pray, he rebuked them and they immediately stopped, for the whole of that night...
In his cell in the monastery he had a rosary, so that he would have a memory of death. Before his death, they brought him the hand of Saint Magdalene, which is kept incorruptible and warm, he worshipped it and departed for the heavenly tabernacles. He was a kind-hearted man, quiet and reclusive, without compromise in faith and asceticism.
He rested in the Lord on 23.5.1973.