The Metropolitan Cathedral in Ia\u0219i, Romania has entered a new era of its existence.<\/p>\n
After 30 years of extensive consolidation and restoration work, the church, dedicated to St. Parascheva, the Presentation of the Lord, and St. George, has finally opened without scaffolding, fully revealing its grandeur and beauty, and just in time for the annual pilgrimage in honor of St. Parascheva, reports\u00a0Doxologia<\/a>.<\/p>\n The restoration work has been underway intensely since 1997, under His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel, who was serving as Metropolitan of Moldova and Bukovina at the time, as the Archdiocese of Ia\u0219i falls within the Metropolia of Moldova and Bukovina. Since 2008, the work has been coordinated by His Eminence Metropolitan Theophan.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a joy for me, because in the last 30 years since I have been at the Metropolitan Cathedral, I have never seen it without scaffolding on one side or the other\u2026 I am very glad that the good God and St. Parascheva helped us to see such a beautiful cathedral, with many improvements,\u201d exclaimed Archimandrite Dosoftei \u0218cheul, a cleric of the cathedral.<\/p>\n However, while the work has progressed enough to remove the scaffolding, it is not fully completed. The stone work around the base of the cathedral should be completed by the end of the year, or by spring of next year, Fr. Dosofthei hopes.<\/p>\n They also intend to clean the iconography and add more iconography through another project in the coming years, Fr. Dosofthei explained.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce these works are done as well, we can say that, indeed, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Ia\u0219i, the \u2018Mother of [Moldovan] Churches,\u2019 as it has always been called, has received a new garment and is as beautiful as when it was founded by its two great founders: Metropolitan Benjamin Costache and\u00a0St. Joseph the Merciful, Metropolitan of Moldova,\u201d the archimandrite commented.<\/p>\n