Dometios Trihenea

Dometios Trihenea was a Romanian hieromonk of the cell of St Hypatios of Vatopaidi Monastery, born at Tilisca in 1909 and reposed on 21 November 1985. He was the first Romanian abbot in the modern history of the Holy Mountain. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Named Dumitru Trihenea in the world, he was born on 8 June 1909 at Tilisca near Sibiu, in a family of shepherds. In 1915 his parents moved with their flocks to the Crimea, and he stayed with his grandmother. In 1922 he dreamt that the Mother of God led him through the monasteries of Athos and, though very young, he set out for the Holy Mountain with the hierodeacon Gerontios and the hieromonk Diomedes. He reached the cell of St Hypatios of Vatopaidi, under the austere elder Theodosios. There he learned music and the Athonite order and was tonsured in 1929. In 1937 he was ordained deacon and priest, and in 1964 became elder of the cell.

On 8 February 1965 he was enthroned abbot of Zographou Monastery, which he found in disorder and nearly deserted. In ten years he patiently tried to organise it, to increase the few Bulgarian monks, to beautify the katholikon and to repair the buildings. Then he returned to the cell of St Hypatios. He was a discerning, simple and humble confessor, also to the fathers of Konstamonitou; many monks and lay people, Greeks, Romanians and Bulgarians, confessed to him. He prepared herbal remedies himself, and when the sick recovered he said the herbs had cured them, to hide his gift. He had special devotion to a nineteenth-⁠century icon of the Mother of God, from which a good fragrance was sensed. He urged people to live the life of Christ, to love and read the Gospel.