The Orthodox Church of Romania is about to build a new cathedral, “a symbol of the Romanian people and of their faith” declared the spokesman of that Church, Costel Stoica. There is already an Orthodox cathedral in Bucharest, but it has space for only five hundred people while the new cathedral will be able to welcome three thousand inside and a further 20 thousand on the open space in front of the building. The project was approved on 4 June and work will begin within the year. The cathedral will be located in the capital’s Carol Park which already houses the grave of the Unknown Soldier and a mausoleum inaugurated by Communist leaders in 1963. “A sign of renewal in a city where the old churches were demolished by the regime of the dictator Ceausescu” commented the vicar general, Constantin Galeriu. Since the 1989 revolution, the Orthodox Church which claims to represent 87% of the country’s 21.7 million inhabitants has consecrated 1,700 buildings for worship. In the meantime, at Polse di Cougnes in Friuli, Italy, a new ecumenical chapel has recently been inaugurated. It was designed by an architect with the help of a Protestant, an Orthodox and a Catholic priest. The chapel seeks to recall that we are all children of the one God. Three symbols have been adopted in order to highlight inter-confessional and ecumenical bonds: the Word for Protestants, the altar for the eucharistic celebrations of Catholics, and an icon for the Orthodox.
