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After
the historic meeting at the Patriarchal Palace, Patriarch Daniel and
Pope Francis visited the National Cathedral in Bucharest.
In his speech, Patriarch Daniel presented to Pope Francis a brief history of the National Cathedral.
In the same message, the Patriarch expressed his gratitude for “the
liturgical spaces offered by Catholic communities to Romanian Orthodox
parishes in Western Europe”.
Your Holiness,
We address to you with the Paschal greeting Christ is Risen!
and welcome you today in this new Cathedral of the Romanian Orthodox
Church, which Your Holiness personally expressed the wish to visit.
Twenty years ago, from 7 to 9 May 1999, when Pope John Paul II visited Romania as a pilgrim, he called this country the Garden of the Mother of God.
Therefore, today, we welcome you as a pilgrim in this new Cathedral,
in which above the Altar (Sanctuary) there is a large mosaic icon of the Mother of God, named in the Greek language “Platytera”, and in the Latin language “Regina coeli”.
This icon of the National Cathedral in Bucharest confirms symbolically the name of the Garden of the Mother of God given to Romania. This Cathedral has as spiritual protector the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we also celebrate the Day of the Romanian Heroes, as a national holiday.
At the same time, the second spiritual patron of the National Cathedral is Holy Apostle Andrew, the First Called, brother of Holy Apostle Peter, from Bethsaida, in Galilee.
This Cathedral is a basilica dedicated to Holy Apostle Andrew, because he is the Apostle of the Romanian people and the Protector of Romania. He preached the Gospel of Christ in the first Christian century on the territory of today Romania, in the former province of Scythia Minor (Dobrogea).
The National Cathedral was built on a piece of land obtained from the Romanian State by the worth of remembering Patriarch Teoctist, as an act of moral reparation for the five churches that existed in this area, three of them being demolished and two moved to new places by the communist regime, in order to build the People’s House (today Parliament Palace).
In this sense, the new National Cathedral is a symbolic edifice of the Resurrection of the demolished churches and also a symbol of the religious freedom of the Romanian people after almost 50 years of communist regime.
The construction of this edifice actually began at the end of March 2011 and lasted eight years, so that, on 25 November 2018, we consecrated the altar of the National Cathedral, together with His Holiness Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch,
in the presence of the members of the Holy Synod of the Romanian
Orthodox Church, clergy, faithful and representatives of the Romanian
society.
In the years 1999 and 2002, His Holiness Pope John Paul II offered to His Beatitude Patriarch Teoctist a financial help of 200,000 US $ for the construction of this Cathedral.
In 2017, this financial help was symbolically integrated by the
Romanian Patriarchate as part of the total cost of 500,000 euros for
purchasing the bells of the National Cathedral, from the Grassmayr Catholic company in Innsbruck, Austria, because, in
the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, bells have a very profound
symbolic value: they represent the voice of God, calling people to
prayer and fraternal cooperation.
We are grateful for this symbolic financial help and, at the same time, we thank you for the support that you constantly give to the Romanian Orthodox believers in Italy and in other countries, where
the Roman Catholic Church made available to the Romanian Orthodox
communities 426 places of worship, 306 in Italy and 120 in other Western
European countries.
For this reason, we accepted the proposal of the Catholic side to
offer Your Holiness and the Catholic Christians present here in this
Cathedral the opportunity to say the prayer Our Father in the Latin language and to sing several Catholic paschal songs.
This attitude is a sign of gratitude for the liturgical
spaces offered by Catholic communities to Romanian Orthodox parishes in
Western Europe. And, at the end of the Catholic paschal songs, the prayer Our Father will be said in the Romanian language and Orthodox paschal hymns will be sung.
As a sign of Romanian hospitality, we want to offer to Your Holiness an icon in the mosaic technique of Holy Apostle Andrew, the spiritual Protector of Romania, along with the wish: Ad multos annos!
† DanielPatriarch of Romania
