John the Wonderful Bishop

John was, according to the account in the Romanian Paterikon, a Russian bishop who struggled in hiding in the Sihla Mountains, in Neamț, from 1918 to about 1951. The Paterikon calls him Saint John the Wonderful Bishop; he is also called the citizen of the Carpathian Mountains. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization. There are no sources for his life and end other than the accounts of monks collected in the Paterikon; the year of his repose is not known.

According to the Paterikon he was of Russian birth and was ordained vicar bishop of the Metropolis of Kiev around 1915. When the atheist persecution began, in 1917-1918, he left Kiev in secret, in civilian clothes, and crossed the Dniester at night on a plank, taking refuge in Romania. He entered as a novice at Crasna Skete in Gorj, around 1920, telling Abbot Dionisie Lungu that he had stayed in the country because of the war. He was sent to herd the cattle. After three years, when the abbot wished to tonsure him, he left the same night and reached the Sihla Mountains in Neamț, where he became a hermit.

No one found out where he lived. The elders say he had a dugout hidden in the earth, in the dense forest between Sihla Skete and Coroi's Ravine, where hermits had struggled for centuries, among them Saint Theodora of Sihla. A forester from Văratec brought him what he needed from time to time. The first monk to know him at Sihla was said to be the protosyncellus Vasian Scripcă, his confessor for many years. In 1931 Constantin, the future Archimandrite Cleopa Ilie, who was herding Sihăstria's sheep, met him on the ridge, and the bishop sent word to his brother Vasile to prepare for a long journey; Vasile died after six months.

Between 1945 and 1946 the protosyncellus Teodul Vărzaru met him three times in Trapeza Clearing, to give him paper and ink, which the bishop had asked for. The Paterikon records the bishop's words on the seven steps of fasting, the last being food of the Holy Mysteries, which he said he had reached. In the spring of 1951 the brother Ștefan Juncu saw him among the monastery's sheep, and the bishop spoke to him, asking him not to tell. After that nothing more was learned: it is not known whether he returned to his homeland, as he wished, or reposed in the forests of Sihla.