LAȚCU VODĂ. – Prince of Moldavia, son of the founder of the principality itself, Bogdan Vodă. He ascended the throne in 1365 and died in 1373. It was to Lațcu that Urban V referred when, writing from Montefiascone on 24 July 1370 to the Archbishop of Prague and the bishops of Bratislava and Cracow, he stated that «the noble man Lațcu, Duke of Moldavia» had communicated to him his desire to become Catholic, together with his people, and to obtain that one of his villages, Seret, be granted the name and dignity of a city and have a bishop; the Pope instructed the aforementioned prelates to investigate and, if the case were confirmed, to build a cathedral at Seret, while the country was to remain a duchy directly dependent on the Holy See. In another letter, the Pope ordered the same three bishops to investigate also the candidate proposed by Lațcu for the new episcopal see, Andrew of Cracow, and to ordain him; which was done.
Andrew was a Franciscan friar of noble family, formerly confessor to Elizabeth, sister of King Casimir of Poland. It seems he never came to Moldavia and that the cathedral was never built. It is certain that not only the people, but even the prince’s wife and daughter, Anna and Anastasia, did not follow Lațcu’s example; to him Pope Gregory XI wrote on 25 January 1372 not to allow himself to be led astray by his wife, who remained obstinate in her errors, nor to separate from her, and that their children were to be acknowledged as legitimate.
Lațcu was buried in the «Orthodox» church of Rădăuți, beside his father who had had it built.