Vitimion Nitoiu of Slanic

Vitimion Nițoiu, born in 1906 at Zăvoieni, in Vâlcea, was a protosyncellus and abbot of Slănic Skete in Argeș between 1944 and 1978. He fell asleep on 27 March 1990. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization.

After high school and military service, in 1937 he entered monastic life at Ghighiu Monastery. Three years later he received monastic tonsure, and in 1943 he was made priest and confessor and became abbot of the sketes of Cetățeni, Ciocanu and Slănic. At Slănic he guided the community from 1944 to 1978, built several cells and raised the number of brothers to over twenty. In the thirty-⁠four years he raised more than ten good disciples, who after his retirement kept up the spiritual life, daily Liturgy and the order of services.

In old age he heard the confessions of the community and of believers, urging them to repentance, and on feast days served the Liturgy. He was never absent from the services of day and night. He spoke with believers, strengthened them with prayer and words of consolation, then invited all to table. The Paterikon describes him as a man of unceasing prayer and fasting, with the gift of speech and of tears, with great devotion to the Mother of God, to whom he read the akathist of the Annunciation every morning at five. He told his disciples to love God with all their soul, then the church, the services, fasting and mercy, and not to be monks only in black clothes. If on one day no poor man came to him, he said the Lord had not visited him, for the poor are his advocates at the judgement. Whatever he had beyond need he gave as alms, keeping only the bare necessities. He always kept his eyes lowered.

On his sickbed his disciples asked him to eat, and he answered that it had run out like the thread on the spool and that he must be with an empty stomach. In 1990, at the feast of the Annunciation, he told the brothers that on Tuesday, 27 March, between half past ten and eleven, he would go to the Lord. He received the Holy Mysteries, and that day, at the foretold hour, he said Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart, O Master, and his last words were: Mother of God, receive me to you. Then he gave up his spirit, mourned by his disciples.