Gabriel Urgebadze

Gabriel of Georgia, born Goderdzi Urgebadze was a Georgian Orthodox monk venerated for his dedicated monastic life and piety. With many miracles ascribed to him, Gabriel's grave in Mtskheta has attracted an increasing number of pilgrims. The Georgian Orthodox Church officially canonized him as Holy Father Saint Gabriel, Confessor and Fool for Christ, on 20 December 2012.

Biography

Early Years

Goderdzi Urgebadze was born in Tiflis on 26 August 1929. He was baptized in infancy in the Church of Great Martyr Barbara in Navtlugi. His father, Vasili Urgebadze, was killed under unknown circumstances when the boy was two, and the family later called him "Vasiko" in memory of his father. He started school at the age of six and first heard the name of Christ at seven. He saved money and bought a Gospel.
During communist persecutions, people hid icons in attics and other secret places; Goderdzi asked them to give him the icons if they no longer needed them. These icons are now preserved in the church he built and in the tower of the women’s monastery of Samtavro. His mother, Varvara Urgebadze, although not irreligious, forbade him to lead a religious life. She later became a nun named Anna and is buried in the courtyard of Samtavro Monastery beside her son. Because of her prohibitions, he left home and made pilgrimages to the monasteries of Samtavro, Svetitskhoveli, Shio-Mgvime, Zedazeni and Betania. The monks of Betania became his beloved spiritual mentors.
After graduating from school, he was drafted into the Soviet Army in 1949. During his service in Batumi, he secretly fasted and attended services at St. Nicholas Church.
Returning from the army in the 1950s, he devoted himself more seriously to spiritual life. In the family yard he built a small hut where he lived and prayed in solitude. He attended services at the Sioni Cathedral. With the blessing of Catholicos-Patriarch Melchizedek III, he first worked as a watchman and later as a psalm-reader.

Beginning of Monastic Service

In January 1955 Goderdzi was ordained a deacon. On 23 February of the same year, at Motsameta Monastery in Kutaisi, he received monastic tonsure with the name Gabriel, in honor of Gabriel the Iberian. On 26 February 1955, in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, Bishop Gabriel Chachanidze ordained him a hieromonk. From 1955 to 1960 he served at Sioni Cathedral, and from 1960 to 1962 at Betania Monastery with his spiritual father George Mkheidze and Hieromonk Vasil Pirtskhalava.
In late 1962, after the deaths of Hieromonk Vasil and Father George, the government closed Betania Monastery. Father Gabriel returned to Tbilisi. In the yard of his family home he finished building a seven-domed house-church. From 1962 to 1965 he served at the Old Trinity Church of Tbilisi.

Protest Against Soviet Power

On 1 May 1965, during the May Day demonstration, Hieromonk Gabriel set fire to a huge portrait of Lenin. An account of this incident was published in the West, in the Orthodox zine Death to the World in 1994. He preached to the people:
The crowd beat him severely. An alarm of the highest level was declared, and he was saved from death only by the intervention of the 8th regiment.
Half-dead, with a broken jaw and seventeen fractures, he was arrested and taken to the KGB isolation ward. Investigators demanded that he confess the act had been ordered by church authorities, promising to spare his life if he agreed. He refused and again called Lenin a "beast", for which he was beaten.
This incident reached foreign media; European and American newspapers published it. As a result, instead of execution, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital in August 1965. He was released three months later thanks in part to the intervention of academician Avlipi Zurabashvili.
Although Father Gabriel retained his rank as a Priest, he was forbidden to serve. He attended services with the laity and received communion as an ordinary believer. He was often summoned to the KGB, returning beaten. From this time he began to live as a fool-for-Christ — outwardly behaving as if mentally ill, loudly preaching in the streets, and even drinking wine publicly, something he had always avoided.
In 1969 the authorities destroyed the small church he had built, but he rebuilt it with one dome.

Later Years

In 1971, by decision of Catholicos-Patriarch Ephraim II and Metropolitan Ilia II, Gabriel was appointed abbot of the women’s Samtavro Monastery and its seminary. He lived in the monastery tower. From 1972 to 1990 he made pilgrimages to churches and monasteries abandoned or closed during the communist period.
In 1987 he moved from the tower to a small wooden hut once used as a chicken coop, enduring cold winters without heating as an act of asceticism. He reported a vision of an angel who revealed the hidden location of a fragment of the Svetitskhoveli ; Gabriel and the nuns retrieved it, and it is preserved in Samtavro today.
In 1990 he sought greater solitude at the Shiomgvime Monastery, but a vision from God instructed him to return to Samtavro, where he remained in his cell in the old tower until his death.
Shortly before his death he developed dropsy, and after breaking his leg he was bedridden for a year and a half. Despite severe pain, he occasionally came outside to sit near the church. In his final years he preached love, repentance, humility, and kindness. The day before his death he foretold his passing. He died on 2 November 1995. He was buried according to ancient monastic custom — without a coffin, in a simple shroud — in the courtyard of Samtavro Monastery in Mtskheta. His grave bears the inscription: "Truth is in the immortality of the spirit".

Veneration

The hieromonk Gabriel is believed by Eastern Orthodox Christians to have possessed powers of healing and clairvoyance, while his remains are considered incorrupt. The oil from a lamp which constantly burned at his tomb in Mtskheta is also considered miraculous. His grave became an increasingly popular pilgrimage site, and in 2012, the Holy Synod of the Georgian Orthodox Church officially recognized him as a saint.
In January 2014 rumours spread that Gabriel, in a supposed apparition to a nun in Mtskheta, had promised that two wishes will be granted to those visiting his tomb just before Christmas on 7 January. This sparked several mass gatherings at Samtavro that extra police units had to be deployed to control traffic. Church officials and the alleged seer-nun later dismissed the visions as false.
The relics of Gabriel were exhumed for reburial in a special crypt within Samtavro Monastery on 22 February 2014. Prior to its reburial, his body was toured around four major Orthodox cathedrals in Georgia, attracting thousands of devotees from all over the country.