A Romanian pensioner has donated RON 10,000 (EUR 2,192) to the People’s Redemption Cathedral, Ziarul Lumina, the Romanian Orthodox Church's official newspaper, reported.

The woman is 93-year-old Gherghina Vasilescu, who lives in a village in Teleorman county, in Southern Romania. She managed to make the donation by saving from her RON 500 (EUR 109.6) monthly pension.

She is known as “mother Gherghina of Saelele, the hermit among the crowds,” according to the newspaper. She has never been married and only eats in the evenings. “This is how she feels more ‘at peace’ and free. She carved her own will, settling with life and its challenges only to God’s will,” Ziarul Lumina wrote. The donation was meant as “a thank you to God for everything she has received from Him,” according to the same source.

The People’s Redemption Cathedral, the biggest church in Romania, is currently being built in Bucharest. It is located near the Parliament’s Palace.

The cathedral should be completed in 2024. When finalized, it will be 120-meters tall. It has been projected to last for 500 years and to withstand earthquakes as powerful as 8.5 degrees on the Richter scale. It also has six atomic bunkers at its underground level, each capable of taking in some 300 people if needed.

The total cost amounts to over EUR 80 million, of which some EUR 65 million has been spent so far, the money coming from the Romanian Orthodox Church’s own funds and from donations. Some EUR 25 million were still needed to finalize the construction this April, according to the Romanian Patriarchy’s spokesman Vasile Banescu, quoted by Mediafax.

This September, the Bucharest City Hall allotted EUR 1 million to the cathedral.

Romania’s Redemption Cathedral will have 25-ton bell with the Patriarch’s portrait on it

editor@romania-insider.com