Financiarul

Over 7,000 worshippers spent the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in cold weather in order to say prayers at the Pious Saint Parascheva’s shrine, which was placed under a canopy in the courtyard of the Metropolitan Church of Moldavia and Bucovina in Iasi (eastern Romania).

The worshippers, who came from Romania and abroad, waited in a queue which, shortly after midnight, was almost 2 km long, in order to manage to touch and pray at the canopy housing the shrines of the Pious Saint Parascheva and Saint Basil the Great.

Although it was cold enough, the pilgrims preferred to stay outside in cold weather for 12 hours so that, on Wednesday morning, they should be able to attend the liturgy officiated by a group of priests headed by Most Reverend Teofan, Metropolitan Bishop of Moldavia and Bucovina, on the festival of the Pious Saint Parascheva.

Every year, shortly before October 14, on the dedication day of the Pious Saint Parascheva, Iasi turns into the biggest place of pilgrimage in Romania and one of the biggest in Europe.

Both Orthodox and Roman Catholic believers from Romania and aboard come to pay to the relics of the saints that were specially brought on a pilgrimage on this occasion. The Pious Saint Parascheva, who is called Saint Friday by the common people, is regarded as the protector of Moldavia.

She lived in the first half of the 11th century and was born at Epivata (nowadays Boiados in Bulgaria), in Thrace, on the shore of the Marmara Sea near Constantinople. She joined a convent, where she devoted herself to fasting and prayers. Parascheva died when she was 27, at Epivata.

After being initially buried, her body was unburied and placed in the Holy Apostles Church at Epivata, where it remained for 200 years. Her relics were moved to several places. In 1235 they were placed in the Mother of God Church at Tarnovo, where they remained for 160 years till the Turks conquered important parts of the Balkan Peninsula.

Then the relics of the Pious Saint Parascheva were moved to Belgrade, where they were kept till 1521, when the Turks conquered this city too. The relics were taken to Constantinople after Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah I asked the Sultan for them, who accepted to give them to him in exchange for some gifts.

One hundred and twenty years later, in 1641, Parascheva’a relics reached the Romanian Principality of Moldavia as a sign of gratitude to Prince Vasile Lupu, who paid off the debts of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople.

On June 13, 1641 the relics were placed in the church of the Three Holy Hierarchs Convent, where they stayed till 1844, when restoration work started on the holy place, and were moved to the chapel of the convent.

The relics were taken to the new Metropolitan Cathedral after, on the evening of December 26, 1888, the building was set fire to by a candle near the shrine that was not put out. According to the writings at that time, the fire smoldered all night through, everything being turned to ashes.

The only things that were not destroyed by the fire were the relics of the Pious Saint Parascheva. The Pious Saint Parascheva was canonized during the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church on February 28, 1950.