George of Cernica and Căldărușani was a Romanian monastic elder of the eighteenth century who renewed cenobitic life at two Wallachian monasteries in the spirit of the Athonite and Paisian hesychastic revival. According to the tradition he was born in 1730 at Săliște, near Sibiu in Transylvania, to pious Orthodox parents, and was drawn to the monastic life from his youth. He is commemorated on December 3, the day of his repose.
As a young man he went to Wallachia and became a disciple of Metropolitan Roșca in Bucharest, whom he accompanied to Constantinople and then to Mount Athos around 1750. Settling at the Monastery of Vatopaidi, he was tonsured a monk and ordained deacon, and there became a disciple of Saint Paisius Velichkovsky at the Skete of the Prophet Elias. In 1752 Saint Paisius tonsured him into the Great Schema, and he was later ordained for the Romanian brotherhood gathered at the skete.
When Saint Paisius and his community moved from Athos to Moldavia, George followed, serving for some twelve years at Dragomirna Monastery as hieromonk, confessor, and steward, and later at the monasteries of Secu and Neamț as the brotherhood relocated under changing political circumstances. In 1781 he was persuaded by Metropolitan Gregory II of Wallachia and the hieromonk Makarios to restore the Monastery of Saint Nicholas at Cernica, which had lain in ruins for more than thirty years.
With the support of the local ruler he rebuilt the church and cells, and within a few years gathered a sizable community ordered by a cenobitic rule modeled on the Athonite and Paisian monasteries. His work at Cernica was so fruitful that he was also entrusted with the leadership of Căldărușani Monastery, which he governed together with Cernica until his death on December 3, 1806. He was glorified by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 2005, and his relics rest at Cernica Monastery.
