Romanian patriarchate planning for new cathedral

(BNA) - On December 9, 2009, at the Patriarchate's Palace, under the presidency of His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the consulting symposium concerning the design principles and criteria of selection for the designer of the new Patriarchal Cathedral. The event was organized by the Department of Monuments and Church Constructions of the Romanian Patriarchate and was attended by architects and engineers from all over Romania.

The symposium is aimed at consulting leading architects and engineers in order to finalize the design solution for the new Patriarchal Cathedral to be built in Bucharest. His Beatitude welcomed all those present and said that the previous consultations were fruitful, as the design of the new Cathedral was improved and enriched significantly over the first proposed solution of the Romanian Patriarchate.

The Romanian Patriarch said that the new worship place will be a traditional Latin-Byzantine basilica marked by Romanian tradition. The new Cathedral has to express the synthesis between vessel, cross and the house of the Holy Trinity, and will preserve the essential elements of Eastern tradition but it will be enriched by several Western elements of architecture which remind us of the common tradition, and underline the role of Romanian Orthodoxy as bridge between the Orthodox East and the mainly Catholic West.