Fr. Ion Doru Iagăru

Fr Ion Doru Iagăru has been a hospital priest in Caracal since 1996: he belongs to the first generation of hospital priests employed by the Ministry of Health. He is the parish priest of the wooden church of the Holy Unmercenaries Cosmas and Damian in the courtyard of Caracal Municipal Hospital, a Maramureș-style church built on his initiative; at first he served in a chapel set up in a room of the hospital. He studied at the Saint Gregory the Theologian Theological Seminary in Craiova and at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Pitești.

Every Saturday, believers from a church committee — many of them young people and teachers — visit the Paediatrics ward with sweets, clothes, shoes and toys, and after the Divine Liturgy the children are given sweets or ice cream. The children and the believers of the area call him “Doru Nemuritorul” (Doru the Immortal).

Year after year, his campaigns set out from the hospital church: the Christmas gifts of “Zâmbește! Familia (noastră) te iubește!”, which reached their tenth edition in 2023; the “Mărțișorul speranței” charity fair, which has bought equipment and antibacterial linoleum for the hospital’s wards; the free seaside camp “Vreau și eu la mare!”; new boots for children through “Desculț am fost și m-ați încălțat!”; blood drives; houses rebuilt or bought for families in need; gifts for the children of the Romanians around Vidin and in the Timok Valley, in Bulgaria.

He does this work together with his wife, Nicoleta Iagăru. She painted the faces of the children in the Paediatrics ward and, in 2019, made the gold-leaf papaya jam sold at the Mărțișor fair. Since 2020 the campaigns have also been carried out through the Fiți Buni Association in Caracal, whose president is Nicoleta Iagăru; the association calls Father Ion the initiator of its projects and an honorary member. Both of them were at the “Pedalăm în siguranță!” camp in 2025.

In 2013 Bishop Sebastian of Slatina and Romanați awarded him the Distinction of Merit, and in 2015 Patriarch Daniel awarded him the Saint John Chrysostom Diploma of Honour, for his part in the Church’s philanthropic projects. Also in 2015, the parish’s “Voluntar pentru spital” (Hospital volunteer) project won first prize in the diocese and was awarded at the Patriarchate. In 2017, at the consecration of the chapel of the Sveta Petka hospital in Vidin, the Metropolis of Vidin named him among its notable donors and awarded him the Order of Antim I. In 2019 the mayor of Caracal gave him a diploma of merit. In 2025, at the first national conference of charity priests, he was elected the Metropolis of Oltenia’s member of their national working group.

His campaigns run on the donations of ordinary people — “the widow’s mites”, as he likes to say — and he was one of the first priests to make a page on a social network to make them known. Two of his calls: “Let us be good whenever we can! And… we always can!” and “I cannot do what you can do, you cannot do what I can do, but together we will do wonderful things.”