1923–2011
A nun of the Tismana Monastery in Oltenia who took on the ascetic path of folly for Christ. She reposed in 2011.
Our Venerable Mother Antonina of Tismana, the Fool-for-Christ
Saint Antonina of Tismana was a Romanian nun of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries who lived as a fool for Christ at the Tismana Monastery in Oltenia. Born Ilinca in 1923 in the village of Runcu, Vâlcea County, she entered Tismana in 1950 and spent the rest of her life there, fulfilling for some forty years the lowly obedience of caring for the monastery's pigs. She reposed in 2011 and was canonized by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 2025.
She is counted among the first Orthodox saints to have lived into the twenty-first century, all of them Romanian. Throughout her monastic life she concealed her spiritual gifts beneath an outward simplicity, and the recognition of her holiness came chiefly after her repose.
According to accounts published at the time of her canonization, Antonina was born on 7 March 1923 in the village of Runcu, in Vâlcea County, and was given the name Ilinca. Her parents, Ispas and Maria, are remembered as devout Christians, and she grew up with two brothers and a sister.
She entered the Tismana Monastery in 1950, in her mid-twenties, and at her tonsure received the monastic name Antonina. She remained at Tismana for the rest of her life.
Antonina's principal obedience at the monastery was the care of the pigs, a humble service she carried out for about forty years from a cell set several hundred meters from the monastic community, near the pigsty outside the monastery walls. Alongside this work she devoted herself to continuous prayer, fasting, and vigil, and by tradition she learned the Psalter and many prayers by heart.
She took on the ascetic path of folly for Christ, deliberately appearing eccentric so that her spiritual life would remain hidden. Accounts relate that she would gather food beneath her bed, where it spoiled over time, while she was elsewhere seen making hundreds of prostrations in the forest. The sisters of Tismana, judging her too simple, did not perceive the gifts she was understood to have received, among them spiritual insight and foreknowledge.
Saint Antonina reposed on 23 December 2011 at Tismana Monastery. On 1 July 2025 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church approved her canonization as a venerable saint, fixing her feast on 23 December, the day of her repose. She is numbered among the first Orthodox saints who lived into the twenty-first century, alongside such figures as Saint Sofian of Antim, Saint Dionysius of Colciu, Saint Petronius the Prodromite, and Saint Elizabeth of Pasărea.
Her relics were uncovered at Tismana Monastery on 27–28 April 2026, in a rite presided over by Metropolitan Irineu of Oltenia, and were placed in a wooden reliquary for veneration. Metropolitan Irineu described her as embodying the virtues of humility and obedience, having attended to the lowliest tasks while keeping a profound spiritual discipline.
Born 1923; reposed 2011 at Tismana. Among the first Romanian saints to have lived into the 21st century. Glorified by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 2025.