[ad_1]
For ten years I have been going, as a journalist, to the pilgrimage of Santa Parascheva, where I found, in the tens of thousands of pilgrims lined the streets behind the cathedral, enough people to fill a book. The common people, who after sitting for more than 15 hours in a row adored, would approach the five or six large barrels with more than a thousand liters of agheasma, fill a two-liter bottle, drink half and wash the other head and neck .
In one year I spoke with two university professors, mathematicians, nearing retirement, who came from Bucharest for the fourth consecutive year, this time with their daughter’s family (mother-in-law, husband and two daughters). Five years ago I met the Carataș couple, settled in the United States since 1991, who had just arrived from Los Angeles to participate in the pilgrimage.
Every year, tens of thousands of Romanians from all over the country bring their problems, stories and joys to Iasi. This year, in the small streets that go from the Metropolitan Cathedral to the Bahlui River, only the pillars numbered by the Gendarmerie remain as a reminder of the pilgrimages of other years.
It is the first time in the last 20 years that only residents have been found climbing from poles 58-60, where the queue should have been three kilometers, to the cathedral, in addition to the 20,000-25,000 believers who huddled between the metal fence and the fences of the houses. Today, October 10, there were already thousands of people who came to worship and the 110 Voluntari trainers had already blocked Iasi and left.
This year, everyone wears masks, the fingers holding the candles are often covered with gloves, and the smell of incense is replaced by that of disinfectant.
“Don’t you want to bring these flowers to the saint?”
On Ștefan cel Mare Boulevard in Iași, an elderly woman in her 70s covers her eyes with a multi-colored scarf. Attached to the surgical mask, with blue folds, only the green eyes can be seen in front of him, as through a visor, with which he scans the entrance area in the courtyard of the Metropolitan Cathedral.
From afar he came to worship the relics of Saint Parascheva, but from here, on the boulevard, 50 meters from the empty metal canopy, it seems even further away. She tells me that she comes from Tecuci, shakes her hand, looks at the cordon of gendarmes at the entrance, enough to understand that the people who enter show an act, a bulletin, a card, something that she certainly does not have.
He doesn’t want to talk to me, he walks over to the fence and makes a hand signal to a young volunteer, dressed in a big red jacket, like paramedics dress. “Couldn’t you take these flowers to the Saint and leave this akathist as well?” He was left with a licked 10 lei bill in his hand, while the volunteer also gave him a small bottle of agheasma.
The same scene was repeated on Thursday, October 8 in Iasi, the second day of the pilgrimage originally scheduled by the Metropolitan Church of Moldavia and Bucovina to the relics of Saint Parascheva, whose patron saint is celebrated on October 14. On Wednesday night, at 00:00, the Bacău Group of Mobile Gendarmes positioned themselves at the entrance to the courtyard of the Metropolitan Complex, where the cathedral with the coffin containing the relics of Saint Parascheva is located.
Access has since been made solely on the basis of a bulletin, because only believers domiciled or residing in Iași had the right to participate in the pilgrimage.
“It’s good that no one controls us at the entrance to heaven!”
The decision of the National Council for Emergency Situations was taken without preparation by the Metropolitan Church of Moldova and Bucovina, which had been working for two weeks with local authorities to consider the location of single-access corridors and the implementation of sanitary protection measures. . So it took them a day to react; from the messages of resigned acceptance of the first day, October 7, to the acid and sharp declarations of the following days.
“It is good that at least at the entrance to Heaven no one checks us in the bulletin to see which town we come from!” Wrote on Facebook, the next day, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Iasi, Fr. Constantin Sturzu. His Eminence Theophanes, Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bucovina, went further and decreed the ban as a concerted action against Christians in Romania.
“Moldova is currently experiencing one of the saddest periods in its history. It is the effect of a discriminatory measure. It is a very difficult situation to understand and accept. I think it is for the first time in the history of Moldova when something like this happens. Believers they have endured severe restrictions on the freedom to manifest religious beliefs in the name of fighting the plague. But everything has a limit that, if exceeded, is not good for anyone. ”
“It’s like we are at war”
Two old women in arms emerge from the Cathedral, small ones against the background of the large and tall doors, so that in the images with the Arab houses whose entrances were up to the great vault of the ceiling, the elephant can enter directly into the courtyard. They both live in Iasi, they are neighbors on a staircase, a block close enough to downtown that they came on foot to worship.
“People always came from Transylvania, because I saw, every year, that Transylvania always comes. Now they weren’t quite there, that’s not possible. But we have not lived through these times, it is as if we are at war, it is like war, how else? My father was a priest and there were times when he couldn’t enter the church; it’s like then, if not worse! ”
The woman speaks in a low but determined voice as she puts the received akathist and the bottle of agheasma in her bag. In the house of her neighbor, who reaches her after she went to light some candles, there are Roman’s relatives who come every year to the landlady of Parascheva and with whom they sit together in line and stay 10, 15 Even 22 hours, tops, six or seven years ago. This year, people came anyway, because the road to Iasi has gotten into a habit that, at their age, they don’t want to get rid of.
“They knew they couldn’t worship, they stayed home and waited for us to eat together. These are the times, what to do, but I didn’t think I would see the day when people would stop entering the church. “” Why don’t you let us? “We have no power?”
The fenced corridors of the Metropolitan courtyard are empty, with about 10 volunteers waiting with masks in hand to shout at someone, and a gendarme device that had taken over the entire interior courtyard the first night, ready for the pilgrimages of yesteryear. The loneliness is palpable, washed away by a rain so violent that the canals burst, filling the streets with eddies of black water.
At noon it cleared for two hours, with a scorching sun suffocating. An old woman dressed in black came out of the cathedral, wearing her mourning and lament in her voice and in her robe. “Illness is illness, give it beyond illness, but if we pray, the Saint helps us and we get rid of illness. I think this is just an excuse, the poor, foreign world comes from the country, but it cannot worship Santa Parascheva, who helped me so much, so much. ”
The woman lengthens her words and complains, her eyes filling with real tears and overwhelmed by a misunderstanding that looks sincere. There is nothing hidden in their crying, who does not listen to discussion while wondering, whispering-crying, swaying slightly:
“Why? Why? Why?” “Why? We pray to God to be patient, that there is no other solution. There are people who cannot come in and cry, but when I saw the empty metropolis, when now the world was in the world and they were praying, and this prayer of people matter a lot. Why don’t they leave us? Why? Don’t we have power? I didn’t think about that, I think it’s better in the hospital. I didn’t mention such a thing, “says the woman, blessing those around her and it goes easily, rocking, on the steps behind the cathedral.
The metropolis is not as empty as you think. The flow is no longer 200 to 300 believers per minute, but perhaps 300 in half a day. But even so, although on the outside he wears masks that cover his nose and mouth, he disinfects his hands and stands 1.5 meters between them, inside the place of worship, he leaves his ear to the protective council.
In the line towards the chest of the Saint, the pilgrims glide under the reflective bands that form the one-way route, touch the icons, caress them and finally bend their foreheads over them and kiss them. In front of the scraper that the Comarcal Committee for Emergency Situations decreed that no pilgrim should touch, before the gaze of the priests, they take out of their luggage handkerchiefs, handkerchiefs, boccele, they touch them with the plexiglass that covers the relics, they look away, then her forehead and finally kissed the scraper in three places. Immediately next to a priest wearing medicinal gloves, a surgical mask makes the sign of the cross with a myrrh, with the same myrrh, to everyone.
Meanwhile, on Friday, the last day for which updated figures are available by the Iași Public Health Directorate, a total of 6296 cases of COVID-19 were registered in the region, Iași is constantly in second place nationally according to the number of daily illnesses. and 172 people died.
