Family and household
The sources give her baptismal name as Floarea and place her birth in Bucharest. She married Antonie while still young, and the couple settled in the Sfântul Visarion neighbourhood of the city, where their household was noted for its Christian ordering.
Four sons were born to them. The eldest served as a parish priest and later took the monastic name Acachie; the second, Constantin, born in 1787, entered monastic life and is venerated as Saint Callinicus of Cernica. The sources describe the children as raised in the fear of God, and it is chiefly through this maternal role that Philothea's memory was carried forward — she is commemorated, in the Synod's own framing, among the mothers of saints.
Monastic life at Pasărea
Widowhood turned her toward the monastic life. On the counsel of her son Callinicus she went to the Pasărea Skete, in what is now Ilfov County, and there received the great schema — the higher monastic tonsure — under the name Filofteia.
Her monastic years are described in terms of virtue rather than office: love, humility, prayer and obedience, with an inclination to hesychast prayer. Sources note that she came to be regarded as a great intercessor. She died on 8 November 1833 and was buried in the monastery cemetery, her son serving the funeral rites.
Glorification
On 1 July 2025 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church, presided over by Patriarch Daniel, approved the canonization of sixteen women of holy life — a group spanning the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries and including martyrs, nuns, wives of rulers, teachers and mothers of saints, among them Princess Maria Brâncoveanu, Saint Olympias of Văratic, and the teacher Blandina, who had been deported to Siberia for fifteen years. Philothea was numbered among them as Saint Philothea of Pasărea, mother of Saint Callinicus of Cernica, with her feast fixed on 12 April.
The general proclamation of the canonization took place at the Patriarchal Cathedral in Bucharest on 6 February 2026. A local proclamation ceremony followed at Pasărea Monastery, at which she was proclaimed together with Saint Elizabeth; it was served after the Divine Liturgy by Archbishop Nifon of Târgoviște, Archbishop Calinic of Argeș and Muscel, and other hierarchs, with the synodal acts read by Bishop Paisie of Sinaia and Bishop Timotei of Prahova. Patriarch Daniel's message for the occasion spoke of the two holy mothers as having lived in perfect simplicity and practised a sincere and generous love. The available accounts differ on the date of that local ceremony — some give 5 June 2026 and one gives 9 June 2026 — and the point is not settled by the sources at hand.
Note on the calendar
Her feast, 12 April, is not the day of her repose. She died on 8 November 1833; the April date was appointed at her glorification, and it is the day on which she is commemorated.
