Gideon Georgescu of Prodromou

Ghedeon Georgescu, born in 1840 in Prahova county, was a protosyncellus and abbot of the Romanian Skete of the Prodromos on Athos from 1891, then a hermit by the sea. He fell asleep in 1925. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

Hearing of the Romanian monks who lived as hermits on Athos, he went in 1865 to the Prodromos and entered the obedience of Abbot Nifon Ionescu. Being humble and obedient, he received tonsure and priesthood. He was gentle in speech, wise and peaceable. He served daily in church, did obedience in silence and judged no one. His best-⁠loved counsellor was the great protopsaltes Nectarie Crețu, from whom he had learned both church chanting and the work of the Jesus Prayer.

For the goodness and holiness of his life, in 1891 the community elected him abbot and spiritual father. The Paterikon counts him a model of monk and confessor and one of the most venerable abbots of the Prodromos. He was humble, gentle and merciful. He went with all to the garden, to obedience, to church and to table, and when a brother asked him for a garment, a coin or a shirt, he gave even the cassock off his back. Under his abbacy the Prodromos had a flourishing age, with a community of a hundred and fifty Romanian monks, a school of psaltic music known throughout Athos, choice confessors and services that won everyone. Monks came from all over the mountain to hear the schemamonk Nectarie and his disciples sing.

In 1900 he withdrew from the abbacy and from the skete's precinct and settled in a small cell by the sea, where he struggled in humility another twenty-⁠five years, alone with God, the Psalter and the Jesus Prayer. Seeing some division in the community, he did not wish to give up the sweetness of stillness. Feeling his end near, he urged all to love and unity and passed in peace to the rest of Christ.