04.10.08
Mother Alexandra/ Princess Ileana of Romania
I tearfully finished Hospital of the Queen’s Heart today and have been doing web searches on Mother Alexandra’s castle in Bran, Romania, her life in America with her six children after her exile in 1948, her second marriage and divorce which has no details that I have found, her entrance into a monastery in France when her children were grown, her founding of the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Pennsylvania in 1967, her return visit to Romania in 1989 where she found her hospital in ruins, and her death a year or so later following a broken hip and subsequent heart attacks. She lived with a broken heart after her exile and was forever homesick after that. She was buried with a handful of Romanian soil on the Monastery grounds, next to a memorial to those who died under Communism.
(The inscriptions can be read when pictures enlarged by clicking on them.)
Here is a tribute by her son, Stefan.
Mimi said,
April 10, 2008 at 5:52 pm
This is so cool, thank you! What a beautiful tribute.
Do you know Bev Cooke? She wrote “Keeper of the Light” about St. Macrina. Anyway, she’s been researching a book about Mother Alexandra that I cannot wait to read.
Andrea Elizabeth said,
April 11, 2008 at 8:47 am
I hadn’t heard of her. I’ll keep my eye out for that!
Anastasia said,
April 15, 2008 at 11:27 am
It was March 6th 1988 when I came upon an article about Princess Ileana in the Spokane News-Paper. My sisters Amy and Marianne Adam went with her children to school in Vienna and there was a lot of talk about her in my family. I call her for some information about myself. She asked me to come to her monastery with my son. In June of 1990 I was at the monastery and she told me that I am the true Romanov Princess. I walked out because I had come up with a different answer. She died before I could ask her more questions.
Andrea Elizabeth said,
April 15, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I was pretty interested in the Anna Anderson story which I was introduced to in the movie Anastasia with Ingrid Bergman. I later saw a documentary where they found out after her death that her DNA did not match.
I just read these additional accounts of Mother Alexandra’s life and some of the gaps have been filled in. She was in failing health especially since her hip was replaced in the late 70’s which forced her retirement as Abess in 1981, when Mother Christophora took over. Her heart was way stronger than her body, but even that failed in the end. She was under tremendous stress all of her life which was lived very close to the two world wars, the communists and the nazis, and the resultant privations despite her being a direct descendant of the King of Romania, Queen Victoria, and Czar Alexander the 1st. Her devotion to the Church was just as strong a part of her identity as being a Princess. I find that her heart lead her head, and some of her notions may have been a bit romantic, for which I forgive her. Better that than cold unfeelingness that leads to inaction. She was a woman of extremely courageous action. May her many efforts bear eternal and multiplied fruit.