He was given the birth name Socrates[4] and grew up in Drousia (also spelled Dhrousha), Paphos District, Cyprus, where he lived until the age or 15.
[3] In 1946, at the age of 25, the monk Sophronios moved to Little Saint Anne's Skete, Mount Athos to join Elder Joseph the Hesychast as an ascetic in his brotherhood.
[citation needed] He then continued to reside at New Skete until 1975, when Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I of Constantinople invited him to become the spiritual father of the Monastery of Koutloumousiou, where he remained until 1977.
Upon the advice of Paisios of Mount Athos, he then moved to the Monastery of the Precious Cross in Minthis, Cyprus in 1977 and was ordained as its abbot on 25 March 1978.
Joseph then returned to Mount Athos on 26 October 1981 and reside in the Simonopetrite Cell of the Annunciation of the Theotokos in Kapsala.