Chisinau pays homage to first Metropolitan Bishop of Basarabia

The scientific symposium “Metropolitan Bishop Gurie Grosu and his Work”, organised by the National Museum of Moldovan Archaeology and History and the Journalism Faculty of the State University, was held on Thursday, March 29, on the occasion of the 130th birth anniversary of Metropolitan Bishop Gurie Grosu, Info-Prim Neo reports. As part of the symposium, doctors of science, clergymen, and university professors have discussed about the outstanding personality of Gurie Grosu in Moldova’s history and culture, the first metropolitan bishop of the Basarabia Church, created after the Great Union of 1918. Gurie Grosu was born on January 1, 1877, in Nimoreni, Lapusna County. He went to the Spiritual School and attended the Theological Seminary in Chisinau, then followed the Pastoral Academia in Kiev, where he received the title of master in theology. He went to the Noul Neamt Monastery, Chitcani, where he ordained as priest and appointed as “eparchial missionary”, and later – as archimandrite. Gurie Grosu was the founder of an eparchial printing house in Chisinau and of the “Luminatorul" magazine. He was also an abbot at the St. Avram Monastery in Smolensk, director of teachers’ schools in Grusevsk and Samovka, teacher of Romanian language in Chisinau, deputy minister of Justice in the temporary Government in Chisinau, where he engaged as an active fighter for fortification of the Unitarian Romanian national state. In 1918, he was appointed by the St. Synod as bishop-vicar of Moldova Metropolitan church, while in early 1920 he was appointed as deputy archbishop of Chisinau and Hotin. In 1928 he became metropolitan bishop of Basarabia, holding this post until November 11, 1936, when he retired. He died in Bucharest on November 14, 1943. A street and a lyceum in Chisinau are named after Gurie Grosu.