BUCHAREST (Reuters) -Maria Rusu and her husband drove all night from their hometown of Cluj in western Romania to the capital Bucharest to visit the country’s nearly completed national cathedral, now the world’s largest Orthodox Christian church.

Like Rusu, hundreds of thousands of Romanians from across the country and abroad have rushed to visit the cathedral since Sunday, when it opened its doors after 15 years of construction.

“We came specifically to see the church, to walk inside to the altar,” said Rusu, a retired 72-year-old economist after hours of waiting in line on Thursday as a Mass was projected on screens. “Romania deserves it.”

The new building will become the seat of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which previously used a much smaller patriarchal cathedral built in the mid-

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