7 July 1938 – Archbishop VASILE COSTIN was born in Satu Nou de Sus,
county of Maramureș. Studies at the Theological Seminary of Cluj (1954 –
1959), at the Theological Institute of Sibiu (1959 – 1963), courses for
a doctor’s degree – in Liturgics – at the Theological Institute of
Bucharest (1963 – 1966); specialised courses at the Faculty of Theology
of the University of Athens and at the Institute of Coptic Archaeology
in Cairo (1967 – 1972), a doctor’s degree in theology in Athens in March
1972, validated in Bucharest, on 21 March 1974. Employed at the
Department for Church Foreign Relations of the Romanian Patriarchate
(1969), eparchial secretary (1972 – 1973) and Administrative vicar of
the Diocese of Oradea (1973 – 1975); ordained unmarried deacon, priest,
tonsured into monasticism at Izbuc Monastery (1974) and ordained
archimandrite. “Superior” of the Romanian settlement in Jerusalem and
representative of the Romanian Patriarchate at the Patriarchate of
Jerusalem (1975 – 1979). He was elected Assistant Bishop to the
Patriarch (10 December 1979) with the title of “Târgovișteanul”
(ordained on 20 January 1980; rector of the University Theological
Institute of Bucharest (16 November 1982 – 1 August 1988). On 3
September 1991 he was elected Archbishop of Târgoviște, a new Eparchy
(installed on 22 September 1991). He was a member of the delegations of
our Church who visited other Orthodox Churches (The Ecumenical
Patriarchate in 1974 and 1978, the Russian Church in 1980), participated
in the 2nd Preparatory Pre-synodal Conference of the Holy Great
Pan-Orthodox Synod (Chambesy, 1982), in the 6th General Assembly of the
World Council of Churches (Vancouver 1983), etc. He passed away on 29
October 1999, in Bucharest, buried in the Archiepiscopal Cathedral of
Târgoviște.
