Sophronius of Achtaleia was an eighteenth-century hierarch who served as Bishop of Achtaleia (Akhtala) in the kingdom of Iberia (Georgia). According to the synaxarion he was born in 1738 in the village of Lotsion in the district of Chaldia in Pontus, the son of a priest named George Sertarides and his wife Barbara, and was baptized with the name Symeon. He is commemorated on September 8, the day of his repose in 1803, though his feast is often kept on September 7 because September 8 is the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos.
Drawn to monastic life from an early age, he entered the Monastery of Saint George in Choutoura as a novice and then passed to the Monastery of Soumela before settling at the Monastery of Vazelon in Pontus. There he studied under an elder named Meletios, was tonsured with the name Sophronios, and was ordained a priest. In 1776 he was sent from Vazelon to the mining settlement of Achtaleia in Iberia, where a community of miners lived, and on 29 October 1777 he was consecrated bishop, with the seat of his diocese at the Monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos there.
He governed the see until 1794, when, according to the tradition, the mining settlement was attacked and destroyed by a raiding tribe. The sources relate that he was taken captive and sold, and was afterward freed and returned by way of Trebizond to the Monastery of Vazelon. He reposed in peace in 1803. The synaxarion relates that on the night of his repose a brilliant light was seen over his grave by many witnesses, and that those who came to the grave were healed of their sicknesses. His relics, reported to be fragrant, were translated to the Monastery of Vazelon in 1824.
