3/15 April 1895 – Metropolitan MORARIU-ANDREIEVICI SILVESTRU (baptised Samuil) passed away, in Cernăuți (photo). He was born on 14 November 1818, in Mitocu Dragmirnei village, near Suceava.
Studies: Gymnasium and the Theological Institute in Cernăuți, doctor “Honoris causa” of the Faculty of Theology of Cernăuți (1875). Parish priest in Ceahor (1843 – 1862), then consistorial counsellor in Cernăuți (1862 – 1877), in parallel music professor at the Diocesan Seminary 8boarding school) and at the School for church singers over there, elected deputy in the Imperial Senate of Vienna and in the Bucovina Dieta in Cernăuți; tonsured into monasticism in 1873, with the name Silvestru, ordained archimandrite, and in 1877 appointed general vicar of the Metropolitan See; on 12 March 1880 he was appointed Archbishop of Cernăuți and Metropolitan of Bucovina and Dalmația (ordained on 6 April 1880 in Vienna, installed on 27 April/9 May 1880), serving till his death. As priest and counsellor he published many poems, fables, stories, especially in the “Calendar for Bucovina” in Cernăuți, that he edited for a time, schools manuals for the “people’s schools”, religion manuals, theological works, sermons, etc; he was vice-president of the “Society for the Romanian culture and literature in Bucovina”, bringing his contribution to the good development of the Romanian schools and maintenance of the national conscience among the Romanians in Bucovina. He militated, as Metropolitan, for keeping the church autonomy and the Romanian rights in Bucovina, against the attempts of the Ruthenians to get responsibility positions and use the Ruthenian language in the church administration. Following his initiative, he set up “Armonia” musical school (1881), then a literary society of the theological students called “Orthodox Academy” (1889), which edited the “Bucovinean Calendar”. He also contributed to the publication of “Candela”, a theological magazine drafted by the professors of the Faculty of Theology (1882 – 1946), to the setting up of “Metropolitan Silvestru Printing House”(1883) and to painting of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Cernăuți. He tried to convene the Church Congress of the Metropolitan See – made up of clergy and lay, but not allowed by the Habsbourg authorities.
Works: Reading book of Romanian legendary, for forms I-IV (each of them in several editions); Arithmetic for the village schools (1868); Little Catechism; Holy History of the Old and New Testaments; Epistles and Gospels for all Sundays and feasts over the year, all of them for the “people’s schools”; General Dogmatic Teaching; Special Dogmatic Teaching: Moral teaching: Liturgics, all for the “higher forms of the gymnasium”; Church sermons for all Sundays and feasts over the year (1860); Church Psalter Book (1879);
