Father Dometie Manolache, Saint of Râmeț. Dialogue with His Eminence Serafim Joantă, Father Stelian Manolache and Mr. Costion Nicolescu
Forty years ago, on the 6th of July 1975, Father Dometie Manolache died in Râmeț, with a sack of bread on his back, the one who rebuilt this monastery, not only putting bricks and mortar in it, but also a lot of grace that came from a mad love for God. This confessor of the Moors, who came from the Bărăgan, was loved by everyone, from Father Arsenie Boca to John Alexander. They all saw in him a man of God, capable of the sacrifice that only saints can make. In winter, in the courtyard of the Râmeț monastery, the nuns often saw traces of bare feet in the snow.
They knew then that Father Dometie had once again given his boots as alms to some poor person and was walking barefoot in the frost. If it were only this episode, we would still consider him a saint. The following discussion, in which His Eminence Seraphim Joantă, Metropolitan of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Germany, Central and Northern Europe, and Mr. Costion Nicolescu, theologian, participated, tried to explore the life of Father Dometie in order to discover the traces of the Holy Spirit’s passage through it.
Mr. Costion Nicolescu, you did not know Father Dometie personally, he died without ever having met him. Nevertheless, you devoted a great deal of time and energy to gathering testimonies of his holiness between the covers of the volume “Father Dometie of Râmeț”. It was the first book to deal systematically with his life. Why did you embark on this publishing adventure, trying to popularise a great but little known confessor?
Costion Nicolescu: As you say, I didn’t know Father Dometie, I “missed” him by a year. In 1976, a year after his death, I was a young engineer, my wife was pregnant and I had to take a leave of absence in June. I visited several monasteries in Moldavia, then I went to Râmeț, following a poem by Ioan Alexandru called Râmeț. And one evening I arrived with some friends, late, because they were walking like this, not too fast. Someone showed us from above a small light where the monastery was. We arrived, through a forest of acacia trees, with an extraordinary smell; we knocked on the door, a nun opened it for us and we checked in. We didn’t stay long, just two days. The next day we saw the convent – the first thing we saw was a world of brides – and I’m not using metaphors, all the nuns had the beauty and excitement of brides at their wedding. The convent is not a wedding like the weddings of the world that happen here and end there, it is an endless wedding with Christ the Bridegroom, as we know.
It was in June. The nuns were preparing for the feast day of the convent – Sts. Peter and Paul – and they were also preparing for Father Dometie’s first anniversary, the whole convent was like a hive of bees. What amazed me, and in a way inspired you, was that Father was still very much present – it wasn’t a mourning, it was a longing. The monastery was much richer in construction, in buildings, than when Father Dometie had started it, but compared to what it is today it was still much less, but with a lot of spirit and zeal. And everywhere, Father seemed to be there, only you didn’t meet him, but he seemed to be present, even though he had been dead for a year. His departure to heaven was a dramatic event. A year ago there had been a great flood, the nuns had run out of food, the road was broken and they had to carry him on a crutch. Father Dometie, returning home with a sack of bread on his back, died near a cross. He died in full vigour at the age of 51. A great confessor, a man who burned for God…
I understand from your book that what he did all his life was to burn at an incomparable temperature. This man didn’t spare himself physically either, he worked enormously, he walked up and down these mountains, he was not only the confessor of the monastery, but practically a shepherd for the surrounding villages of mots (local population). To reach their churches, he would cross the streams early in the morning, even in winter, and then, soaked to the waist, he would serve in the frozen churches, drying his clothes during the liturgy! He never spared his body.
He didn’t spare his body, the places there are pretty rough. At first he was appointed parish priest for the commune of Valea Mănăstirii, a commune made up of about 13 hamlets scattered throughout the valleys, 20-30 houses, maybe 50. He had to go up and down all these hills… And he didn’t want to leave the faithful unmoved… He was very popular and well known. He was the confessor of the priests, he was also the abbot of the monastery, but the spiritual side prevailed over the administrative side.
There were a few things about him that seduced me from the beginning. For one thing, he had this spiritual cheerfulness that you don’t always find and that must be the characteristic of a true monk. He used to say, “A monk means to have a beautiful face, not to be sullen and narrow-faced, that is not in our spirit”. I liked the peasant vein, kept to the end. Then he had that delicacy of the saints that Father Stăniloae speaks of. Delicacy is part of the structure of the great saints. In Father Dometie there was a gentleness towards the nuns, towards those who came; and we can illustrate it in many ways, by many gestures, by general behaviour and by occasional gestures. He fell into the category of “love and do as you please”. For example, in the liturgical regulations, which some are very strict about, when he saw that people were tired after coming from the road, he would shorten what could be shortened – but not the essential – so that people could rest and experience the Liturgy in full joy and strength.
And yet his ministry was on fire.
They were on fire, and he was very eager, very desirous. And there’s something else: when you see him in the pictures, he looks like a wandering monk – as you said, he gave his boots and his clothes to the poor.
Your Eminence Serafim Joantă, you knew Father Manolache personally. What was he like as a man?
His Eminence Serafim Joantă, Metropolitan of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Germany, Central and Northern Europe: I was impressed by his gentle, humble but very lively face. I remember that my first meeting with His Holiness took place during a Holy Liturgy celebrated in the open air, after which I approached him and asked him to bless me to start studying theology. When I entered the church at the end of Liturgy to take off his holy vestments, he took me to a corner, put me on my knees and asked me some questions, after which he said to me: “I give you my blessing to go and study theology in Sibiu”. I was very happy.
At the same time, at night, in the small church of the monastery, the sister of Father Stăniloae, Sister Reveca, who became a nun, Rafaela. It took place in the monastery church, with the doors locked, because Father and the nuns who were with him at the time were afraid of Securitate. The monastery was not yet officially recognised, it was practically clandestine. Father was a priest in neighbouring parishes, but in Râmeț the monastery did not exist, it had been abolished in 1959 by Decree 410.
Not only the nuns, who came to him in increasing numbers, but above all the faithful in the area and elsewhere were fond of Father, precisely because he had a powerful word and was very detached from material things. He helped the poor with the word, with confession, with Holy Unction, but he also helped them with everything he had, he gave them his clothes. I have never met a man so compassionate, so devoted, a man who did not value himself but gave his soul for the convent, for the nuns, for the people. That is why he died before his time, because he did not spared himself, and that is a sign of great holiness.
You have spoken a great word, but I confess that I think of him in this way, even though I never met him. Do you think that Father Dometie could be a saint and therefore canonised by the Church?
He is undoubtedly a saint, and if the Church were to recognise this and canonise him, it would only be to its advantage. Because the more the Church promotes our contemporary saints in the calendar, saints that many of us have known, the more She has to gain in the sense that they are living examples for the faithful today. We honour the ancient saints we have in the calendar, saints of other nationalities; I think it is appropriate to multiply our contemporary saints. We have proclaimed saints from our recent history, and very well, because until 1990 we had very few saints among our Romanians. After 1990, more saints were proclaimed, but mostly from the past. But we must also look at the saints of today, the saints of our time, and there were and are so many, starting with our great confessors: Father Paisie Olaru, Father Cleopa Ilie, Father Arsenie Boca, Father Petroniu Tănase, Father Sofian Boghiu, Father Macarie de la Pasărea and many others! I believe that if we put them on the calendar, our faithful would be more enthusiastic and turn to God. We need a deep spiritual revival, starting from our own values. When I think that so many pilgrimages are made to Greece, to the saints there, Nectarios and all the others, when we have our own saints who are no less and no less helpful than the saints in other parts of Orthodoxy. They are just as helpful if we honour them, venerate them, run to their holy relics, to the places where they have passed away. What is important is our faith and devotion to these saints, the prayer we address to them. Once again, there is no need to make such long journeys when we have so many saints in our midst!
Your Eminence, is there any initiative for Father Dometie Manolache in this regard? I mean, could an official canonisation process be launched?
Undoubtedly. But I believe that there will not be a separate file; I believe that we should proceed to the canonisation of Romanian priests, of the great confessors of the 20th century, for example. I believe that we could canonise some of our holy confessors of the 20th century, among whom Father Dometie and many others should undoubtedly be included. It is true that the Church is very careful not to declare saints, people who could be challenged. The Church does not declare saints very easily, but I think it is now time to declare them more easily, that they are saints without any doubt. Let us think, first of all, of Father Arsenie Boca, whose tomb, as everyone knows, has been the subject of a huge pilgrimage, unique in the history of Orthodoxy, not only in Romania.
… which in a few years has grown from nothing.
Exactly, exactly! But the same thing is happening at the tomb of Father Cleopas Ilie, at the tomb of Father Paisie Olaru – the devotion of the people who knew these great fathers of ours is very great. And even if they were not known, they are absolutely holy, there is no doubt about that. Once again: The Church has nothing to gain by declaring them saints.
I hope that the initiative of which you speak will come to fruition in the years to come.
May God help us, may we pray, because God ordains and fulfils everything through our prayer, through our profound expectation. May it be our cry from the depths of our hearts to God that He may fill our calendar with our Romanian saints.
Mr. Costion Nicolescu, you said that you would tell me a very special episode related to the almsgiving of the priest who also gave away his clothes.
Costion Nicolescu: Yes, and about his humility in general. Father Dometie was, let’s say, a brother of Leonida Plămădeală, the future monk and Metropolitan Antonie Plămădeală, a man of great culture and a fine observer of monastic life and spiritual life in general. And when Father Dometie came to Bucharest for his doctoral studies, Vlad Antonie invited him to stay with him as an old colleague, even as a friend, because he loved him very much. And it is said that he received him in his apartments here, at that time Father Antonie was the Patriarchal Vicar, and he put him to bed in a beautiful bed, with sheets. At night, when he went to the bathroom, the vicar stumbled over something on the floor: it was Father Dometie, who was lying on the floor. Later, Father Antony also told how on several occasions when Father Dometie came to him with his shabby vests, he gave him a new one because he could afford it. But the next time Father Dometie would come with an old one because he had given the good one to charity. Then the nuns would say that once he had taken off his boots and had to go and serve, but he was barefoot. In the end he took some of Father Philotheus’ slippers to serve there. But he had small feet, he was small in stature, and Father Philotheus’ shoes were huge. And they asked him, “How can you go to Mass like that?” And he said, “Never mind, you have nothing to do.” He was totally natural, there was nothing tense about him, and all the monastic virtues – virginity, poverty – were lived to the full.
Father Stelian Manolache, you are the grandson of Father Dometie Manolache. What was he like, beyond what we know from books?
Father Stelian Manolache: First of all, you have to know one thing: Father Dometie was a multifaceted personality, he had a combination of everything that is our Romanian DNA: kindness, spirituality, dedication. I had the great opportunity to be educated by Father Dometie, because I was orphaned by my father at a very young age, and he took care of my education, but also that of his grandchildren. In fact, he took care not only of our education, of our family, but also of many students, people who went on to higher education, he was a man who was very concerned about what he left behind.
As a man he was very demanding of himself, but at the same time he was very demanding of us. He was also very good, but at the same time very strict, because he knew that only with a certain rigour and a certain way of being can you impose yourself on others. For those of us who were part of Father Dometie’s close circle, it is very impressive that we never called him “uncle”, for example; we only called him “Father”. Because that’s what he was to us! Because that’s how he imposed himself, not only on us, the grandchildren. And the brothers who were older than him, and even his parents – Mamaia, for example, Father’s mother, who later became Mother Filotimia, never called him “Steliane” or “Stelică”, but “Father Dometie”. And what he said was law! Because he had such a discernment and such an ability to distinguish between thoughts and the right path of goodness, truth and beauty that it was impossible to argue with him.
(Interview by Cristian Curte – Monks’ World Magazine no. 98, August 2015)