On May 1, 1965, during official May Day celebrations in Tbilisi, Georgian monk Gabriel Urgebadze set fire to a flag bearing the face of Vladimir Lenin. Dressed in black, he climbed onto a balcony, poured kerosene over the flag and ignited it as military parades, Communist Party marches and large portraits of Soviet leaders filled the city center.
According to the account, Urgebadze shouted that glory belonged not to a dead man but to Jesus Christ. The crowd beat him before he was arrested by the KGB. Authorities viewed the act as more than vandalism: it was treated as an ideological and institutional challenge to the Soviet state, made by a member of the Church.
Rather than execute him and risk turning him into a political martyr, the authorities sent him to a psychiatric detention hospital. He was diagnosed as a “deep psychopath” and mentally ill, and reportedly spent seven months there under physical abuse, forced medication and severe isolation. He was eventually released after pressure from the local community and because officials concluded that he did not represent a risk of armed rebellion, but he was excluded from ordinary community life.
After losing his position in the Church and facing widespread suspicion, Urgebadze adopted the role known in Orthodox tradition as a “Fool for Christ.” He appeared in torn clothing, sometimes barefoot during Georgia’s harsh winters, and carried a broken glass jar through the streets. He also spoke in parables, leaving many listeners unsure how to interpret his words.
The Soviet regime prevented him from attending or building churches, so he constructed one in the yard of his mother’s home using stones and discarded materials collected from Tbilisi’s streets. Authorities destroyed it several times, but Urgebadze rebuilt it each time. Later, he lived at the convent of Saint Christina, connected to the Samtavro Monastery in the historic city of Mtskheta, where his accommodation was a renovated former chicken coop.
As the Soviet Union weakened and collapsed, attitudes toward Urgebadze changed. During the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of believers sought him out for spiritual guidance, prayer and healing. People attributed prophetic, clairvoyant and healing powers to him, and his visitors included both beggars and former Communist officials who had once persecuted him.
Urgebadze died of hydrops, an abnormal accumulation of fluid in body tissues or cavities, on November 2, 1995. On December 20, 2012, the Georgian Orthodox Church canonized him as Saint Father Gabriel, Confessor and Fool for Christ, also known as Saint Gabriel of Georgia.
On February 22, 2014, his remains were exhumed in Mtskheta. Before being placed in a special crypt at Samtavro Monastery, they were displayed in four major Orthodox cathedrals across Georgia, attracting thousands of pilgrims. His photographs are now found in Orthodox and Catholic churches around the world, reflecting the transformation of a man labeled mentally ill by the Soviet authorities into one of Georgia’s most widely venerated saints.
Sources: CNN Brasil.