Anastasia Șaguna

Saint Anastasia Șaguna was a Romanian Orthodox laywoman, the mother of Saint Andrei Șaguna, Hierarch and Metropolitan of Transylvania, born in 1785 at Miskolc (the source also says that she came from the Aromanian or Romanian community in the diaspora of the Habsburg Empire) and died in January 1836 at Pest, at the age of 51. She was canonized by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church at its meeting of 1 July 2025, with the title Saint Anastasia Șaguna, mother of Saint Hierarch Andrei Șaguna, and her feast on 1 December, the National Day of Romania.

Few details are known about her childhood, but church sources describe her as a woman raised in the spirit of the fear of God, of honesty and of steadfastness in the faith of her fathers. She married Naum Șaguna, a merchant and member of the Orthodox community. They lived in several towns of the Empire, among them Miskolc, where their son, Anastasios (Andrei), was born on 20 December 1808. The family also had two daughters: Evreta and Ecaterina.

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Orthodox population of the Habsburg Empire was under pressure to adopt Catholicism or the Union with Rome to obtain civil and commercial rights. According to church tradition, Naum Șaguna passed to Catholicism for practical reasons, but Anastasia refused to abandon her Orthodox faith. Despite outside pressure, she kept the Orthodox order in the family and took care that all the children remained steadfast in the faith. Her son, Andrei, would later confess, according to the source, that he owed his mother the love of God and of the Orthodox faith, the path of his life and the spirit of sacrifice that guided him in all his work.

Anastasia Șaguna lived a modest life, marked by faith and devotion. She passed away in January 1836 and was buried on 17 January 1836 in the Kerepesi Cemetery in Pest (today part of Budapest); the source gives the same day, 17 January, both as the day of death and as the day of burial. On 1 July 2025 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church decided on her canonization. The feast day was fixed on 1 December, the National Day of Romania, as a symbol of the link between faith, nation and spiritual unity. Saint Anastasia is regarded as a model of piety, courage and maternal devotion; her life shows holiness lived in the family, through faith, moral education and sacrifice. Her influence on her son, Saint Andrei Șaguna, contributed directly to the spiritual and cultural renewal of the Romanians of Transylvania in the nineteenth century.