Holy Venerable Father Gabriel (Urgebadze), Confessor and Fool for Christ (+1995)
Saint Gabriel, in the world Goderdzi Vasilis dze Urgebadze, was born on 26 August 1929 in Tbilisi, in Navtlughi, and was baptised there, in the church of the holy Great Martyr Barbara. His father, Vasil Urgebadze, was chairman of the village council and died in 1931; Goderdzi was left an orphan while still a small child.
After six classes at School No. 24 in Tbilisi, in 1949, he was called up for military service and served in Batumi. In spite of the strictness of army life he managed to go to church, and it was there that he learned the Khutsuri script.
Back from military service, in 1951–1955 he built a church with four domes in his own yard. The authorities tried several times to demolish it, but the church still stands in Tbilisi, on Gia Bakarashvili Street.
In 1955 he was ordained deacon in the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Kutaisi, and on 23 February of that year, in the monastery of Motsameta, Bishop Gabriel of Kutaisi and Gaenati tonsured him a monk and, at his own request, named him Gabriel in honour of Saint Gabriel of Athos. On 27 February he was ordained hieromonk.
On 1 May 1965, during a communist parade, Father Gabriel burned a twelve-metre portrait of Lenin. Under interrogation he said: “The Crucifixion of Christ should hang there, not a picture of Lenin. What does a man want with glory? It should say: Glory to Christ God.”
He was charged under an article that carried the death penalty without exception. The regime’s officials demanded that he confess he had done it all on the Church’s instructions, and offered him his life in exchange. In spite of long suffering he did not change his stand. In the end he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital, where he was treated with extreme inhumanity.
In the last years of his life Father Gabriel laboured in Mtskheta, in the Samtavro convent, and lived in King Mirian’s tower. People went to him there for counsel and prayer.
In 1995 the elder fell gravely ill with dropsy. A month before his death His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II raised him to the rank of archimandrite. On 2 November 1995 Father Gabriel reposed and, as he had asked, was buried according to the monastic rite, wrapped in a straw mat, in the courtyard of the Samtavro monastery.
On 20 December 2012 the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Georgia numbered him among the saints as “the Holy Venerable Father Gabriel, Confessor and Fool for Christ”. His day of commemoration is 2 November (20 October Old Style).
