From medicine to theology: Metropolitan Antonie of Bessarabia recounts his journey towards faith

His Eminence Metropolitan Antonie of Bessarabia spoke on a ProTV Chișinău podcast about the path that led him from medical studies to theology and, subsequently, to monastic life.

Metropolitan Antonie explained that his interest in theology began while he was studying medicine, when his psychiatry courses prompted questions about the existence of the soul and its suffering.

“And these questions arose: if someone is suffering in their soul, that means the soul exists. But under what circumstances does the soul become ill? And if the soul becomes ill, what is the relationship between the suffering of the soul and the suffering of the body?”

After completing his medical studies, news of the opening of the Faculty of Theology in Iași and the opportunity for young people from Bessarabia to study there prompted him to pursue this new path. In Iași, encounters with professors such as Fr Mircea Păcurariu helped him, according to his own account, see the history he had been taught during the Soviet period differently.

“I knew that I would serve the Romanian Orthodox Church and that I would do everything in my power to help my fellow countrymen who do not know to which people…