In the city of Ceadir Lunga, 125 km from Chisinau, is located the Monastery of the Holy Great Martyr Dimitriy. This is the largest and best known monastery in Gagauzia.
The history of the place begins in 1972, when the Soviet government detonated the church – the only religious temple in the village, located in the center of it. The future priest Dmitriy Chirioglo, a 14-year-old teenager at that time, found in the ruins of the church and saved 2 icons from destruction. For 20 years, the city of Ceadir-Lunga ,with a population of about 60 thousand people, had no place of prayer, no church.
In the late 1980s, Dmitryi returned from Moscow, where he graduated Theological Academy, and began collecting signatures to allow construction of the temple. Surprisingly, the Soviet government responded positively, but were imposed the condition – church to be built on the outskirts of the city.. The construction began, the interior wall paintings being done by Dmitriy along with his wife.
Since 2000, the curch of St. Dmitriy has been transformed into a monastery for women, whose abbess became the nun Elisaveta. Today, in the monastery live 20 nuns. Near the temple there is a spiritual and educational center with a Sunday school, classrooms and a library. Also on the territory are the nuns’ halls, a building with household goods, as well as the bell tower.
