His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae of the two Americas celebrates his 55th birthday on Friday, April 15, 2022.
His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae was born in the city of Constanţa on April 15, 1967, to his parents Nicolae and Victoria, both now asleep in the Lord.
In 1988 he was admitted to the Andrei Şaguna Orthodox Faculty of Theology in Sibiu, which at that time was the only school to admit high school graduates. After four successful years, he defended his degree in theology with the dissertation, “The Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Metropolitan John Zizioulas.”
On November 10, 2001, he defended his PhD dissertation entitled “Matters of Psychology in the Works of Evagrius Ponticus” and obtained the degree of Doctor in Theology.
During his years of study, in order to combine theory and practice, study and priestly ministry, he was ordained in the spring of 1997 first as a deacon, then as a celibate priest, by His Eminence Metropolitan Serafim of Germany and Central Europe, with whose blessing he then established and served the parish of the Nativity of the Lord in Stuttgart, Germany.
In the same time period, Fr. Nicolae was the representative of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the Dialogue Committee for European Integration of the Conference of European Churches (Brussels).
After receiving the prestigious academic title at the end of his graduate studies, Fr. Nicolae returned to Romania where, on December 18, 2001, he took his monastic vows at Radu Vodă Monastery in Bucharest.
In March 2002, the Electoral Church Congress of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America and Canada elected him their archpastor. The election was validated by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The ordination to the episcopacy and the enthronement ceremony took place in July 2002 at St. John the Baptist Church in Montreal, Canada.
In the working meeting of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church, on October 28, 2016, he was elected Metropolitan of the newly established Metropolis of the two Americas.
The elevation ceremony to the rank of Metropolitan took place on October 30, 2016, at the Patriarchal Cathedral in Bucharest. The enthronement took place on April 30, 2017, in Chicago, in the presence of a delegation of the Romanian Patriarchate.
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