His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia will attend this year’s celebrations in honour of St. Demetrius the New, Protector of Bucharest. As a special blessing, he will bring with him a particle of the holy relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov.
The relics will then be gifted to the Russian Orthodox community attached to St. Nicholas-Tabacu Church in the capital.
The six-day celebration will open on Tuesday, October 24 with the “Way of the Saints” procession, which will include icons and relics of St. Demetrius, a fragment of the precious wood of the Holy Cross, relics of St. Nektarios of Aegina, and an icon of St. Seraphim.
The delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, headed by Patriarch Kirill, will arrive on October 26. The Divine Liturgy for the feast of St. Demetrius on October 27 will be celebrated by His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel of Romania, along with Patriarch Kirill, His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Albania, His Beatitude Archbishop Rastislav of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and other representative hierarchs and clergy.
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St. Seraphim is well-known and venerated in Romania. There are fourteen books published about the Sarov elder in the Romanian language. Monasteries, sketes, parishes, and charitable foundations have been founded in Romania in recent times in the name of St. Seraphim—for example, the Eșanca women’s monastery near the city of Iași. There is a piece of the relics of this Russian saint in the famous men’s monastery of Sihăstria Putnei, as in other sketes and parishes.
In modern times, Romanian believers know the saint’s life and teachings, and some of them have testified to miracles which have happened to them.
This tradition of venerating St. Seraphim of Sarov, planted in Romania at the beginning of the preceding century, gave its fruit at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first. After 1990, the Romanian faithful began to go on pilgrimages to Diveyevo, new translations of the life of St. Seraphim began to appear, and churches were built in his honor.
The holy Sarov elder abides in Romania; and priests, monastics, and the faithful greatly love him. The enthusiastic response of Romanian pilgrims who have visited St. Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery and venerated St. Seraphim’s holy relics bears witness to this.
Translated by: Orthodox Christianity
