Gerontius Ghenoiu

Gherontie Ghenoiu, born on 21 July 1910 at Golești, in Argeș, was an archimandrite and confessor of the Patriarchal Cathedral in Bucharest from 1950 until his death in the spring of 1984. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of repose.

Orphaned of his mother young, he was called to monastic life. In 1928 he entered the community of Frăsinei Monastery and then went to Lainici Skete, in Gorj, with the hieromonk Visarion Toia and other brothers, to reopen the skete, abandoned for almost thirty years. He finished the Monastic Seminary at Cernica and the Faculty of Theology, in 1943, with the thesis Inner Discipline, or the Formation of the Spiritual Man. He was ordained priest in 1941, was director of the theological seminaries of Bucharest and Curtea de Argeș between 1954 and 1958 and, from 1950, serving priest and confessor at the Patriarchal Cathedral, the most sought-⁠after spiritual father of believers. Between 1980 and 1984 he contributed to the spiritual and material renewal of Saint Nicholas Skete at Sitaru, in Ilfov. He died in the spring of 1984 and was buried at Sitaru, mourned by many spiritual children.

The Paterikon shows him loving of neighbour and merciful. Daily he went to hospitals and to sick believers in Bucharest, heard confessions, performed the holy oil and communed the suffering, then gave money to the poor and invited priests, monks and believers to table in his cell, whom he served himself. He also sent help to poor churches.

He told his disciples about Frăsinei, founded by Saint Callinicus in 1863, with a rule like that of the Holy Mountain: obediences were communal, no one did anything without blessing, at obedience silence was kept and the Jesus Prayer said, and on journeys one recited aloud psalms and akathists, so that distances were counted as a way of one Compline. Confession was weekly, on Friday. At one at night the waking bell rang, then the rule in the cell, Midnight Office and Matins between two and five, the akathist, hours and Liturgy in the morning, Vespers at sixteen hundred, and after the evening meal, Compline. Of Lainici he said that its greatest confessor and abbot was Saint Irodion Ionescu, confessor of Saint Callinicus of Cernica, called by believers the daystar of Lainici, who died in 1900 and prophesied that the skete would stay desolate many years.