Archbishop Victorin Ursache commemorated at Putna Monastery 25 years after his repose

Archbishop Victorin Ursache, who led the Romanian Orthodox Missionary Archdiocese in America and Canada from 1966 to 2001 , was commemorated at Putna Monastery on Saturday, 18 July, marking 25 years since his repose in the Lord.

His Grace Damaschin of Dorna, Assistant Bishop of the Archdiocese of Suceava and Rădăuți, officiated a memorial service in the monastery’s princely church and then spoke about three essential virtues of the late hierarch. The first was his respect for proper ecclesiastical order.

“Raised in a family of faithful people, he preserved throughout his life what he had learned there. He never forgot what he had acquired at Neamț Monastery, where he entered as a novice, received the monastic tonsure and was ordained deacon and priest, wherever God later appointed him to serve the Church—neither in Jerusalem nor during his nearly 50 years in America,” the bishop emphasised.

Order, self-sacrifice and fidelity The second virtue of Archbishop Victorin was his spirit of self-sacrifice, Bishop Damaschin continued. This was evident both in the family of nine siblings in which he grew up and during the pioneering years of his missionary work in the Holy Land…