Vatican City - Adrian Dancă January 12, 2021 - Vatican News . "With deep sorrow, we inform all Greek Catholic believers and all Romanians that today, January 12, 2021, at 15:20, His Holiness Florentin Crihălmeanu, Bishop of the Greek Catholic Diocese of Cluj-Gherla, died suddenly at the Monastery of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Mother of God from Cluj-Napoca ”: we find this out from a communication of the Press Office of the Greek Catholic Episcopate of Cluj-Gherla, sent through the spokesperson Fr. Daniel Avram.
Born in 1959 in Iași, he moved with his family to Turda. In 1984 he graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics of the Polytechnic Institute of Cluj. He attended clandestine theology classes during communism, and in 1990 was ordained a priest by Bishop George Guțiu. He continued his specialization studies in theology at the Pontifical Urban University of Rome and became a professor at the Greek Catholic Theological Institute in Cluj. In 1997 he was consecrated bishop by St. John Paul II in St. Peter's Basilica, being at that time the youngest Catholic bishop in the world. From 2002 he became the bishop of the Greek Catholic diocese of Cluj-Gherla. Succeeding in harmonizing the zeal of pastoring souls and deepening theological culture, in 2005 he received his doctorate in theology at the Urban University.