Antipas Dinescu

Antipas Dinescu was a Romanian archimandrite, the most worthy abbot of the Prodromou Skete on Mount Athos, later abbot of Caldarusani Monastery. He was born in 1859 in Prahova county and reposed in 1942, buried by the sea on Athos. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Called to the monastic life, in 1880 he went to the Romanian Prodromou Skete, where he was tonsured and learned obedience, humility and church chanting from the best Romanian monks, among whom the schemamonk Nectarios the Protopsaltes stood out. In 1890 he was ordained priest and then appointed superior of the Darvari Skete in Bucharest, a dependency of Prodromou. In 1900 he was chosen by all as abbot of the Prodromou Skete and led it fourteen years with rare gentleness and wisdom, in a time of flourishing, with a community of more than a hundred monks.

In 1914 he returned to Romania with some disciples and became abbot of Caldarusani, which he guided for twenty years, a great spiritual father to monks and laity. He then withdrew to Athos again and struggled eight years with his disciple in a cell on the seashore, becoming a spiritual father known throughout the Holy Mountain. In 1942 he gave his soul into the hands of the Lord and was buried there, by the sea.