Gheorghe Gh. Simionescu

Gheorghe Gh. Simionescu
The artistic team of “King Carol II” Community Cultural Center of Pietroșița, circa 1932; in the top row, center, the priest Gh. Gh. Simionescu
Personal
Born	2 August 1895 (1895-08-02) (21 July OS) Pietroșița, Dâmbovița County, Romania
Died	27 March 1992 (1992-03-28) (aged 96) Pietroșița, Dâmbovița County, Romania
Religion	Orthodox Christian
Known for	Leader of the cultural and civic life of the inter-war Pietroșița; a founder of King Carol II Community Cultural Center; president of the township organization of the National Peasant Party
Occupation	Orthodox priest
Writing career
Notable works	Thesis for Bachelor's degree in Theology, no. 1332. The Faculty of Theology Cernăuți - Romania, 25.02.1937
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Gheorghe Gh. Simionescu (b. July 21 / August 2, 1895,) was a Romanian Orthodox priest from the township of Pietroșița, Dâmbovița County, pronounced Dambovitza, county, southern Romania - d. March 27, 1992, Pietroșița), ), entered in the legend of the Dâmbovița fields as the Popa Gică din (from) Joseni from Pietroșița, Dâmbovița county, Romania. He was the 7th Orthodox priest from father to son, a series of clerics who covered about 200 out of the 250-year history of the new church (made up from stone and brick, in the mid-18th century first in that region) built 1765-67 in the Joseni (downtown) neighborhood of Pietroșița. Notice that popa means father/priest in Romanian colloquial terms; English equivalent of Gheorghe is George, while Gh. is its abbreviation, modified often like Gică.

Early years, elementary and seminary studies

He was the youngest of the 6 children of the Fr Gheorghe Simionescu (Popa Ghiță), who died in May 1918, and of the priestess Mary born in Bezdead, who died in June 1917. He made the primary school in Pietroșița. in 1902 - 1906 and the "The Metropolitan Nifon" theological seminary in Bucharest in 1906 - 1914.

The Great War. Marriage and priesthood beginning

Between 1916 and 1918 he was mobilized as a sanitary soldier on the battle front with Germany, and, after the Peace of Buftea of May 1918 declaring (provisionally) the Romanian Kingdom defeated by the Central Powers, he returned home, finding his father in a coma, sick of typhus while quarantined with gendarmes at the gate, and dying a few days later, after having lost his mother a year earlier. Although the plan was to study medicine according to the experience on the front, the parishioners led by Nicolae C. Enescu, the godfather of the family, convinced him to remain a priest replacing his father, because the eldest brother Nicolae, a seminary student as well, had died of pneumonia a few years before. Thus he becomes the 7th in a series of priests from father to son (mentioned in the church register are: Popa Dobre, Ion the priest, another Ion - father-in-law of Radu Vătaful – one of church founders, Gheorghe, Simion the priest – who became Simionescu mid 1850 when modern identity cards were introduced, finally Popa Gheorghe (Ghiță) Simionescu father). In order to get ordained, he married at the Doicești townhall on 1918 August 26 Virginia Enescu (a union through the efforts of the kindred, but blessed by God according to its further history), then religiously on September 5, "being in business” since October 1 (that is, on October 14, new style) 1918 - the year of the Great Union of Romania, as a priest at the Joseni Parochial Church bestowed to “The Assumption of The Virgin Mary and The Saint Pious Parascheva”.

Pastoral activity. University studies

In his first years of pastorate he ensured the interim priesthood in the “De pe Luncă” and “Valea Țâţii” churches. After the marriage, although his family multiplied with his five children, he completed his theological studies during 1931 - 1937 with the Faculty of Theology (distance teaching) in Cernăuți, province of Bucovina (that time in Greater Romania). For the pastoral excellence, he was awarded by the Patriarch Nicodim Munteanu in 1942 with the "Blue Belt" (granted to the “sachelar” priests having a distinguished pastoral records), with the "Patriarchal Cross" by Patriarch Justinian Marina in 1968 and with the "Red Belt" honoring the “iconom-stavrophor” priests (having an exceptional pastoral records) by Patriarch Justin Moisescu. He served as a parish priest until January 1983, when he retired after 65 years (the longest workbook in Romania), then serving as an adjunct priest together with his worthy successor the Archpriest Eugen Popescu, son of Fr Victor from Bezdead. He died in March 1992 close to the age of 97, leaving behind him a life, a spirituality, a cultural-artistic work and a community cohesion having entered in the local and national history.

Civic and cultural activity

Beyond the pastoral mission, Popa Gică initiated the socio-cultural renaissance of the inter-war Pietroșița that, without the communist fracture, would have surely reached the spiritual-cultural top among the rural communities of Muntenia (main province of South-Eastern Romania, the core of the former Wallachia). Here are some of his prodigious activities (in chronological order): • Advisor of the “Brazi” People's Bank granting cheap loans to the needy (lasting 1904-48); • President of the Consumer Co-operative "St John Baptist" (lasting 1919 - 1948); • Initiator and President of the "Pietroșița" Cultural-Sporting Society (February 1931); • Director of the Community Cultural Center (during 1925-1945), in which he set up the mixed choir (numerous prizes, including the podium at the national contest of Curtea de Argeș and the 1st place at the county contest in June 1942), and the amateur theater group (these continued to work a couple of years under communist regime), involving several dozen people with whom he organized annual country-wide trips for exchanging experience (the last in 1939); artistic actions renowned at Christmas (carols) or other religious or secular feasts. His imposing physical presence helped a lot in these activities in which he was seconded by the famous cantor Vasile Mărculescu. The major part of the revenues got that way during the 1920s went to the objectives as follows.

• Building new premises for the "The King Carol II" Cultural Center (1931–32), Gh Gh Simionescu being a leader of the initiative group;
• The Museum of Joseni Church, he founded, endowed with precious liturgical volumes from XVII – XIX centuries, the most important 25 of which were confiscated after WW II by the emissaries of the new power "for safety reasons";
• maintenance of the church building; he undertook the first explorations for the restoration of the Brancoveanu-style painting; this old dream of Popa Gică has been fulfilled after the 1989 Revolution by Fr. Eugen Popescu and the Ruralia Foundation in 2001;
• National Peasant Party's local leader of the purest altruistic orientation according to the evangelical precepts; he ran for deputy in November 1946, which brought to him from the communist power the arrest, after a chase through the Bucegi mountains in July 1947, and imprisonment in Pitești, from where the efforts of the Priestess Virginia (helped, of course, by the Pietroșița's tzuika and the bacon cheese presented to the big shots of day), brought him home, wonderfully, after 4 months of incarceration only.

Family and descendants

Along with Popa Gică, for both good but especially for bad, Priestess Virginia was not only the practical engine (counterbalancing the don-quixotic idealism of her husband) of a numerous family with many children all having graduated higher education institutions (Mariana – an economist, Magdalena – a physical education teacher and also a priestess, Gheorghe – a renown forensic doctor, Aurelia and Mircea Valeriu – both economists), but also a model of successful striving for the women of Pietroșița. At their house, now a historical monument renovated in 2003, stopped for a while Nicolae Iorga, Dimitrie Gusti, Dorin Pavel - makers of Romanian culture, science and civilization that would have inspired the children. It is worth to mention that in 1944 the Simionescu's parochial house offered a distinguished hospitality to a couple of American prisoners (shot down pilots when bombing the oil fields of Ploiești, Romania being that time willy-nilly allied with Germany).

Spiritual inheritance

On this biographical background, it is not so surprising that after the Romanian Revolution in 1989 Prof. Dr. Radu Negoescu, grandson of his eldest daughter Mariana, settled for a street and set up a Memorial Library that bear Popa Gica's name in 1997, and organized the first edition of the " Priest Gh. Gh. Simionescu Pietroșița Days" in 1999 that preceded the establishment of the “Renaissance of Pietrosita - Ruralia” Foundation [12], also due to the devotion of people like Eugeniu Rotaru, Nicolae Posta, George Lupu, Mitică Vărzaru and ladies of great heart who strove for Ruralia next 20 years, such as Lucreția Mărculescu and Coca Bucur.

Conclusions

The most relevant evocation of the personality of Popa Gică belongs to late engineer & poet Ion Enescu-Pietroșița. (to whom the Ruralia Foundation consecrated a memorial plaque on October 13, 2018 at the XX edition of the Pietroșița. Days), which wrote in 2003 as follows: "With his pensive and majestic face / With warm and baritone-like voice, / Served at the Joseni Church, / A man with a pure, spiritual life // Gentle, willing to give anyone a good counsel, / He faced restrictions without fear! / It’s like I’m seeing him, as if I would have him in my face, / Always, always, our Popa Gică ! // I can’t forget and I will take you with me, / Where the steps will lead me, / Both to bad and to good, / With you in my thoughts, I'm going to kneel at the Holy Cross!".

References

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