Dumitru Stăniloae

Dumitru Stăniloae (Romanian: [duˈmitru stəniˈlo̯aje]; 29 November [O.S. 16 November] 1903 – 4 October 1993), also Anglicized as Demetrius Staniloae, was a Romanian Christian Orthodox priest, theologian and professor. He worked for over 45 years on a comprehensive Romanian translation of the Greek Philokalia, a collection of writings on prayer by the Church Fathers, together with the hieromonk Arsenius Boca, who brought manuscripts from Mount Athos. His book, The Dogmatic Orthodox Theology (1978), made him one of the best-⁠known Christian theologians of the second half of the 20th century. He also produced commentaries on earlier Christian thinkers, such as St Gregory of Nyssa, St Maximus the Confessor, and St Athanasius of Alexandria. On 4 February 2025, he was canonized as a saint by the autocephalous Romanian Orthodox Church, but he is highly venerated in all of the Orthodox World for his theological works and impact on the collective faith of the Church. He is a controversial figure outside the Orthodox Church, primarily due to his early activity as a journalist when he promoted antisemitism and praised totalitarian figures such as Ion Antonescu and Adolf Hitler, before and during World War II, and his continued nationalistic and ultraconservative positions in his later years. He was recruited by the Securitate under the codename "Văleanu Ion" as an informant following his release from prison in 1963 but he did not cooperate. Accused of being a "mystical element with hostile concepts", he would be removed from the network of informants in 1973.