{"id":64756,"date":"2025-09-15T04:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T04:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/64756\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T04:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T04:17:09","slug":"romanian-orthodox-community-gathers-in-newly-purchased-cathedral-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/64756\/","title":{"rendered":"Romanian Orthodox community gathers in newly purchased cathedral \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of members of Ireland\u2019s Romanian Orthodox community travelled to south Dublin on Sunday to worship in their newly purchased cathedral<\/a> and mark the annual exaltation of the Holy Cross. <\/p>\n

Romanian and Irish-Romanian families from counties Wexford, Kildare, Galway and Dublin as well as from Northern Ireland gathered to celebrate in the former Christ Church Leeson Park, now the Episcopal Cathedral of the Diocese. <\/p>\n

The church is estimated to have sold for more than \u20ac4 million and was purchased with financial assistance from the Romanian government as well as through local fundraising among the 300-400 families who make up the orthodox parish. <\/p>\n

Men, women and children filed into the 19th-century church from 8.30am on Sunday where they paid the customary small fee for communion bread and a candle which they later presented at the altar with their name on a small slip of paper. <\/p>\n

A chorus of hymns and chants filled the rafters of the cathedral, as the melodious orthodox choir sang without pause throughout the appointment of a new deacon. This was followed by the liturgy led by the Romanian Orthodox bishop Nectarie Petre of Ireland and Iceland, who was elected to the role last year. <\/p>\n

Fr Calin Florea, parish priest of the Romanian Orthodox community in Leeson Park, said Sunday\u2019s service was a significant moment for the people who have gathered for worship in the church for more than two decades. <\/p>\n

The orthodox community agreed a lease with the Anglican Church in 2004 who \u201caccepted us to use the church\u201d, said Fr Florea. <\/p>\n

\u201cSince then, many families have had their weddings, their baptisms, sadly their burials here. They\u2019ve become very attached to the church and it feels like home. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople come here when they\u2019re sad, when they\u2019re burdened with the heavy duties of life. They come here to rejoice and are happy. And for everybody here today, it\u2019s like returning home.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the 2022 census there were more than 100,100 Orthodox Christians in Ireland, of whom 28,476 were Romanian Orthodox. Nearly two-thirds of Romanian citizens reported their religion as Orthodox in the latest census. <\/p>\n

When Fr Florea arrived in 2004 he was one of two Orthodox priests in Ireland \u2013 the second was the late Fr Godfrey O\u2019Donnell, a former Jesuit priest who left the Catholic priesthood to marry in 1985 and was ordained a priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Ireland in 2004. Today, there are 17 orthodox priests in Ireland, said Fr Florea. <\/p>\n

He said it was \u201ca miracle\u201d the parish had succeeded in raising the funds for the purchase. \u201cSeven months ago when we left the church, none of us believed we would be able to buy the cathedral. I think it\u2019s a miracle from God, today was a very important moment for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that Ireland\u2019s Romanian Orthodox and Anglican church had formed a very strong relationship and recently told the Most Reverend Dr Michael Jackson, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, that the Leeson Park church would \u201cremain their home as well\u201d. \u201cThey didn\u2019t leave, we are here together now. It\u2019s important for us to be one Christian voice in secularised society.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of members of Ireland\u2019s Romanian Orthodox community travelled to south Dublin on Sunday to worship in their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,52,41185,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,10676,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-64756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-dublin","11":"tag-dublin-4","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-romania","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}