Tuesday, 3 November 2015, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, was at Delea Veche parish church, where he celebrated a Trisagion service for Maria Ion, who died during the fire broken out at Collective Club of Bucharest.
At the end of the celebration, His Beatitude delivered a speech for the mourning family in which he urged them to pray and perform mutual assistance.
“Now, the most precious thing, beside the prayers for the deceased person, is to console the mourning persons who suffer. This is why we have come here to pray for the rest of the soul of the servant of God Maria, mother to five children. This is the sorrow not only of the family, but of the entire community. This is because we see the Church as a family of the families, the spiritual family of the conjugal families and of all those who pray here, in the church, not only for the living, but also for the dead. We pray that these children who remained without their mother should be strengthened, and we must help them. We cannot completely make up for the lack of the parents, but we can try, through a merciful parental and brotherly presence and efficient aid, not only during these days, but during the next years too, to remember them somehow that the love of the mother is manifested through the hands of those who feel how great the sorrow of the mourning persons is”, His Beatitude said.
The Patriarch of Romania offered a material aid to the mourning family.
Then, the funeral service was celebrated by a group of priests and deacons.
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Mrs Maria Ion worked as a cleaning woman at the Collective Club of Bucharest. On the night of the tragedy, a colleague asked her to go to work at the club instead of her. Unfortunately, Maria did no longer come back from the club. She was a widow and mother to five children who remained orphans after the fire of Friday.
