Saint Andrew the Apostle

Born in Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee, Andrew was a fisherman with his brother Simon and a disciple of John the Baptist. Hearing John proclaim "Behold, the Lamb of God!", Andrew immediately followed Jesus, becoming the "Protokletos" (the First-Called), and ran to tell his brother: "We have found the Messiah". After Pentecost, the Holy Spirit led him to evangelize Thrace, Scythia (the ancestral lands of Romania and the Black Sea), and Greece. Ancient tradition attests that he dwelled in a sacred cave in Dobrogea (Romania), baptizing and sowing the seeds of faith among the Romanian people, who honor him as their spiritual father. In Patras (Greece), under the persecution of Proconsul Aegeas, he was martyred upon an X-shaped cross (decussata). Tied to it for two full days, he never ceased preaching the radiant love of Christ to the gathered multitude until his final breath.