Budești Monastery

Budești Monastery lies within Budești commune, in the Cosău valley, about 7 km south-east of the village centre, and belongs to the Sighet deanery of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Maramureș and Sătmar. Locals call it Roșia Monastery, after the stream that runs past it, whose bed is reddish from iron minerals. It is dedicated to the Holy Emperors Constantine and Helen (21 May). The diocese records that a monastery existed at Budești in the seventeenth century, where Bishop Iosif Mărturisitorul held a synod with the Maramureș clergy in 1690, and that it disappeared in the eighteenth century; the present monastery does not stand on the site of the old one. The foundation stone was laid on 4 June 1994 at the initiative of the priest Vasile Pop and the people of Budești. From 1995 the monk Vichentie Lazăr, who came from Pătrunsa Skete in Vâlcea County, built a wooden church, consecrated on 21 May 1998, a monastic house and a bell tower. After his death in 2006, the hieromonk Mihail Bud, a monk of Rohia Monastery, was appointed abbot. The skete was raised to the rank of a monastery for monks in 2012-2013, with the approval of the Synod of the Metropolis of Cluj, Maramureș and Sălaj. In 2016 the old church was dismantled and a new one begun, designed by the architect Dorel Cordoș after the wooden church of Budești Josani, with an added porch. It was built by local craftsmen coordinated by Ioan Ciceu and painted in 2022-2024, in the al secco technique, by Andrei and Astrid Mușat of Bucharest and Ovidiu and Ioana Gliga of Alba Iulia. The iconostasis is covered entirely with icons in oak frames, without carving, and the furniture is the work of the sculptor Viorel Mihiș of Baba. The church was consecrated on 21 May 2024 by Bishop Iustin of Maramureș and Sătmar, Metropolitan Iosif of Western and Southern Europe and the auxiliary bishop Nectarie of Brittany, receiving a second dedication, the Protection of the Mother of God. The complex also includes the monastic house, built in 1998-2001 and rebuilt in 2006-2010, and a wooden pilgrims' house built in 2013-2015. Part of the access road is asphalted. The monastery is not a historic monument.