Monk Nicolae Steinhardt of Rohia Monastery, the author of the well-known spiritual memoir The Journal of Joy, could be proposed for canonisation, after a meeting of the metropolitan synod held on Tuesday in Cluj-Napoca.
The working session was chaired by Metropolitan Andrei of Cluj and attended by bishops from the dioceses of Cluj, Maramureș, Sătmar, and Sălaj.
During the meeting, the hierarchs recalled the spiritual and cultural legacy of monk Nicolae Steinhardt of Rohia, whose work and personal witness had a major influence on Romanian Christian culture after the fall of communism.
The metropolitan synod also examined a range of administrative, pastoral-missionary, cultural and social-philanthropic matters.
Among the administrative decisions discussed were the elevation of two sketes to the rank of monasteries and the approval of new diocesan distinctions.
The Metropolis of Cluj, Maramureș and Sălaj comprises three dioceses: the Archdiocese of Vad, Feleac and Cluj, the Diocese of Maramureș and Sătmar, and the Diocese of Sălaj.
Short biographical note – Father Nicolae Steinhardt
Nicolae Steinhardt was born in 1912 in Bucharest into a Jewish family and became one of the most original Romanian intellectuals of the inter-war generation, known as an essayist, literary critic and public intellectual. After the communist takeover of Romania, he was arrested in 1959 in the so-called “Noica–Pillat group” political trial and sentenced to prison.
While imprisoned at Jilava prison in 1960, Steinhardt was secretly received into the Orthodox Church, an experience that marked a decisive spiritual turning point in his life. His conversion, lived under extreme conditions of persecution and suffering, became the foundation of his later theological and literary reflection.
After his release, he continued his cultural activity under constant surveillance by the communist authorities. In 1980, he entered monastic life at Rohia Monastery in northern Romania, where he lived as a monk until his death in 1989.
His most famous work, The Journal of Joy, written largely in clandestine conditions, combines autobiography, theology, and cultural commentary and is today regarded as one of the landmark spiritual books of modern Romanian literature, bearing witness to faith, freedom, and human dignity under totalitarian rule.
Photo: Metropolis of Cluj / Darius Echim
