Photo credit: (c) Gabriel APETRII / AGERPRES STREAM

‘The longest road is the one from home to home,’ father Justin quoted poet Nichita Stanescu as saying.

The monastery can be reached through a forest road, a by-passing from Petru Voda village, connecting Poiana Largului to Targu Neamt town.

The monastic complex erected by father Justin Parvu is made up of two monasteries, one in Petru Voda and one in Paltin-Petru Voda. If in Petru-Voda, a monk monastery, there is only the church and their sanctums, in Paltin-Petru Voda father Justin built a church, sanctums for nuns, an asylum for elder people, an orphanage and a clinic with general practice and dentistry consultation rooms, all for needy people.

The nuns of Paltin have a laboratory for the preparation of natural remedies, through medicine herbs processing. The team preparing these remedies is made up of doctors, pharmacists and GM nurses.

The social and medical activity of all these places is coordinated through a foundation initially called Petru-Voda and renamed Justin Parvu, in the memory of its founder. The foundation also owns a book publishing house, Petru Voda Monastery Publishing House and Atitudini magazine.

The most known figure of the monastic places is, most certainly, that of the founder, archimandrite Justin Parvu, increasingly more often compared with father Arsenie Boca.

Justin Parvu was born in Petru-Voda village, on February 10, 1919, and began his monastic life at Durau Monastery, at the age of 17. In 1939, after he became a monk, he entered the monastic seminar of Cernica, near Bucharest. During the Second World War, between 1942 and 1944, he served as military priest on the Eastern Front, all the way through Odessa. After the communists took power, the father was arrested on political grounds and sentenced to 12 years in prison, serving his sentence in the jails of Suceava, Vacaresti, Jilava and Aiud. Before being sent for re-education to Pitesti, he was sent, while still a prisoner, to work in the mine of Baia Sprie. He served the largest part of the sentence in Aiud prison, which was also the toughest period of the 17 years of detention.

After he finished his sentence, in 1960, he got 4 more years of prison for not having abandoned his faith. In 1964, he was released and became a forest worker. After two years, in 1966, he came back to the monastic life, at Secu Monastery, where he was a monk priest. With the intent of controlling him, the communist ruling forced father Justin in 1975 to serve in Bistrita Monastry. After 1990, father Justin returned to Secu Monastery and worked as priest and confessor at this monastery. Two years later, he withdrew to solitude, thinking of spending the rest of his days in fasting and prayer. In 1991, he established the Monastery of Petru Voda. The father continued his mission of changing even a bit this world, and in 2000, he built a nuns’ hermitage near Petru Voda Monastery, an education centre for children and an asylum for elder persons and three years later he established an orthodox education and attitude monthly publication, called Glasul Monahilor (The Voice of Monks).

Father Justin Parvu died on June 16, 2013, at 94 years of age, and was buried near the church he built in Petru-Voda. The cemetery of this church is also the resting place of priest Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa and poet Radu Gyr.

The name of Petru-Voda Monastery has been connected over the past few years with data concerning the active involvement in national disputes like that on biometric passports or on the exploitation of shale gas. Thus, through the voice of archimandrite priest Justin Parvu positions contrary to the idea of introducing the respective type of passport have often been expressed. In 2013, on the ground of a wider movement supporting the manifestations against the exploitation of shale gas, part of the monks of Petru-Voda made a solidarity gesture with the anti-Chevron protestors of Pungesti — Vaslui. This gesture materialised in bringing to the protest site a symbolic roadside crucifix from the Petru-Voda Monastery cemetery.

The monastery’s community is also linked to some controversial moments. Thus, archimandrite Justin Parvu was recorded on video in February 2009 and 2011, while the nun choir of Paltinu was singing to him, on his birthday, legionary songs.

In November 2013, seven years after father Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa was buried in the monastery’s cemetery, his remains were exhumed, contrary to the provisions of his testament. By father Calciu’s son perseverance, who threatened to send the monastery to court, his body was buried again, although part of the monastic community wanted his canonisation, as the remains were not rotten.

Shortly after that, in January 2014, on the monastery’s website, a release in the form of an open but not assumed letter by the monastery’s leaders accused the intelligence services of supervising and controlling the activity of the monks through some moles, for deteriorating the image of the monastery.

Beyond all these aspects, the Monastery of Petru-Voda remains a piece of heaven, a place of high spirituality, sought by thousands and thousands of believers. AGERPRES