During the early morning hours of Thursday, January 29, 2009, Preoteasa Tatiana Prisacarou, fell asleep in the Lord. Having struggled for two months to recover from surgery, she was not able to continue fighting.
She was the wife of the late Very Rev. Basil Prisacarou, who fell asleep in the Lord on April 16, 2002 at the age of 91 after serving Christ with faithfulness, love, and dedication for 64 years as a priest in Romania and the United States.
Born Tatiana Elade on September 17, 1919 [September 4 OC] in Basarabia [Bessarabia], Romania, she was the first daughter of the Rev. Visarion and Preoteasa Vera. Her grandfather was also a priest. In 1937 she graduated from the Diocesan Girls High School in Chisinau [Kishinev], Romania. In 1938, she married young seminarian Basil Prisacarou, a graduate of the Theological Seminary in Chisinau who had just completed four years of additional theological studies in France and England. That same year he was ordained to the priesthood by His Eminence, Metropolitan Ephrem [Enacescu] in the Chisinau Cathedral.
In 1939, Tatiana gave birth to her son, Anatol. In the summer of 1940, she became a refugee with her family when the USSR invaded Bessarabia and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Romanians from their own land. Tatiana and her family narrowly escaped with their lives as the Soviet Army and communist sympathizers mercilessly attacked and killed Romanian forces and many civilian refugees.
In 1941, after the Axis forces freed Bessarabia from the Soviet occupation, Tatiana and her family returned to their homeland. In 1942, she gave birth to her second child, Margaret. In 1944, the Soviet Red Army again overran Bessarabia and forced the Prisacarou family to flee to Romania. They were evacuated via cattle train cars under appalling conditions in order to escape the atrocities perpetrated by the Soviets. Tatiana’s grandfather, Father Visarion, narrowly escaped being killed by the Soviet bombing of civilians and was captured and imprisoned for one year by the communists. The family finally settled in Bucharest, where they lived for the next 38 years.
In 1982, with the help and sponsorship of the OCA, Preoteasa Tatiana and Father Basil escaped the communist persecution in Romania and immigrated to the United States with their son Anatol, joining their daughter Margaret and her son Bogdan Christian, who had escaped a few years earlier. While in America, Tatiana faithfully supported and helped Father Basil in several parish assignments, including Saints Cosmas and Damian, New York, NY; Saint Vladimir Church, Lopez, PA; Holy Cross Church, Washington DC; and St. John the Theologian Church, Shirley, NY.
In 2002, after the repose of Father Basil, the family established the “Father Basil Prisacarou Scholarship Fund” at Saint Tikhon’s Seminary, South Canaan, PA, in memory of their beloved father and priest who, while an orphan and without any financial means of support, had been the beneficiary of merit scholarships which allowed him to attend seminary and theological school.
May Preoteasa Tatiana’s memory be eternal!