{"id":536890,"date":"2025-08-07T13:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T10:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/?p=536890"},"modified":"2025-08-07T13:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T10:07:07","slug":"spiritual-hunger-moldova-bishop-veniamin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/spiritual-hunger-moldova-bishop-veniamin\/","title":{"rendered":"Bishop Veniamin: Soviet atheism and secularism have left society spiritually starved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>On the feast of the Prophet Elijah (according to the unrevised calendar), His Grace Bishop Veniamin of Southern Bessarabia reflected on the spiritual needs of Moldovan society, which he said still suffers from a \u201chunger for the spiritual\u201d due to decades of Soviet atheism and ongoing secularisation.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bishop Veniamin presided over the Divine Liturgy in Puhoi village, Ialoveni District, to mark the feast day of the great Old Testament prophet.<\/p>\n<p>In his homily, the bishop spoke about the life of the Holy Prophet Elijah and the context of his time\u2014a society plagued by idolatry and disbelief. He highlighted Elijah\u2019s prophetic virtues, the immorality of King Ahab, the falling away from true faith, and God\u2019s pedagogical response aimed at calling people back to righteousness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese realities are still present today,\u201d Bishop Veniamin noted. \u201cWe feel the hunger for spiritual nourishment as a result of both the atheism imposed during the Soviet era and the continuing influence of secularism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The hierarch also mentioned several upcoming Orthodox events taking place in August in both Chi\u0219in\u0103u and Neam\u021b. Among them is the Orthodox Youth Meeting, which will be hosted at the end of the month in the city of Cahul.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; overflow: hidden;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fepiscopiabasarabieidesud%2Fposts%2F1054056636906645&amp;show_text=true&amp;width=500\" width=\"500\" height=\"787\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Photo: Southern Bessarabia Diocese<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BasilicaNews\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-495171\" src=\"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/banner-x-en-889x148.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"889\" height=\"148\" srcset=\"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/banner-x-en-889x148.gif 889w, https:\/\/basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/banner-x-en-1024x171.gif 1024w, https:\/\/basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/banner-x-en-1536x256.gif 1536w, https:\/\/basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/banner-x-en-2048x341.gif 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 440px, (max-width: 768px) 354px, 890px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the feast of the Prophet Elijah (according to the unrevised calendar), His Grace Bishop Veniamin of Southern Bessarabia reflected on the spiritual needs of Moldovan society, which he said still suffers from a \u201chunger for the spiritual\u201d due to decades of Soviet atheism and ongoing secularisation. Bishop Veniamin presided over the Divine Liturgy in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":536604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[12660,17973,9780,2199,35771,35770],"class_list":["post-536890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dioceses","tag-atheism","tag-bishop-veniamin-of-southern-bessarabia","tag-metropolis-of-bessarabia","tag-republic-of-moldova","tag-secularism-2","tag-spiritual-hunger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}