Now, let's look at church's history.  By all acconunts, with all that happened with it along history, this church shouldn't even be there.  History.  Gone.  Condominiums.  Yet, there she is!  Seemingly it began in the 1600's, although at later restoration digs found foundations as old as the 14-th century - as old as the City of Bucharest itself.  It started as a resting place, a shelter, for visiting bishops from the provinces, with a chapel, later consolidated into a full service church.  Built of wood at the beginning, it suffered devastaing fires, one of them a great Bucharest fire.  Once was even burned down by the invading Ottoman hordes.  And after each disaster, small or great, someone was there to see that it was repaired or rebuilt!  Either a rich man, or a crowned head, or the efforts of many, someone or someones saw to it that it came back.  Same after it was rebuilt out of stone, later brick and mortar, the earthquakes kept damaging it, and every time, one way or another, it was rebuilt again.  In 1753, after the second stone re-construction was finished, it was consecrated and dedicated to St. Demetrius, patron saint of  the City of Bucharest.  The painting inside was done by two master church-painters under the supervision of an Italian painter named Giulliani.  And the saga continued.  Eartquakes and fires.  And rebuilds.

Damaged again by the great Bucharest fire of 1848, the paintings were restored by famous Transylvanian painter Carol Popp de Szatmary, who was also one of the first 10 photographers of Europe.  Finally, after the WW One, the church was abandoned and slated for demolition!  The end, one would think.  And, again, this time at the intervention and insistence of a Romanian academic, Ioan C. Filitti, by 1930 it was saved and returned to the B.O.R. - the Orthodox Church of Romania.  Repaired again in the 1960's, now of brick and mortar, it still keeps its old wooden tower - odd, but it will stay that way, the church is now a protected historic monument, even though from the older, 18-th century church, only the carved stone with the inscription above the door remains.

And it's not over.  Although fully functional, the church is now undergoing major repairs and consolidation, and the fresco paintings will again have to be restored, they were damaged in the 1977 eartquake!  And the building itself isn't the only problem of St. Demetrius - Post.  What's lacking is much more important - a congregation.  Located in a commercial and administrative area of the city, hidden by tall trees and by taller buildings, only a few residents call it their church.  Fr. Mihai Gojgar, the new parish priest, described the atmosphere at the church when he first visited as "a quiet place where you can recollect, pause and reflect, you can have your own corner, nobody will disturb you".  Well, this may be good for quiet recollection, but it's surely not god for the life of a church, so Romania's Partiarch Daniel, when he gave Fr. Gojgar the parish to run, he also tasked him, amongst others, to make the church a "University Chapel" (Paraclis Universitar) to attract students from the nearby University of Bucharest, especially students in mass communications disciplines, to make it their church, since two other churces near the University, St. Nicholas - "Russian" and St. Nicholas - "From One Day" are packed with University students most of the time.  And it's happening.  More and more students are seen at the church, there are also youth programs, and more people elect to hold their baptisms and weddings here.  St. Demetrius - Post is back again, after its last near-demise in the 1920's, after over 40 years of God-less communism, and after escaping even Ceausescu's wrecking ball that vanished many great and historic Bucharest churches.  And are we to think that this long series of events has nothing to do with St. Jude, Patron Saint of the Impossible, and that the presence of St. Jude's icon at this church, and only at this church, is a mere coincidence?  Maybe.  Then, again, as author Laura Pedersen puts it: