|
RRI newsletter subcription
(e-mail address):
|
 |
Archives:
|
|
| MEDIA HEADLINES (8.08.2007) |
| (2007-08-08) |
| Last updated: 2007-08-09 15:32 EET |
“It would be a shame having a Patriarch and later learn that he collaborated with the former communist secret police- the Securitate” – former dissident Mircea Dinescu has told daily the ROMANIA LIBERA; Dinescu is now a member of the Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives. This is the argument brought by the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives when they decided to verify whether high-ranking representatives of the Romanian Orthodox Church collaborated with the Securitate. “The future Patriarch’s dossier is being verified “ writes the daily EVENIMENTUL ZILEI, which points out that the first to be checked will be clerics running for the highest position in the Orthodox Church hierarchy, left vacant after the death of Patriarch Teoctist last week.
The favorites have already “started the election campaign” writes the daily COTIDIANUL. These are: Daniel, metropolitan bishop of Moldavia, and Teofan, metropolitan bishop of Oltenia. Both born in the 1950s, they belong to the new generation of the Romanian Orthodox Church Synod.
The late patriarch Teoctist, who lived to be 92, had experienced the whole communist dictatorship, which stretched between 1944 and 1989. Teoctist was rebuked for failing to take a stance when churches were pulled down on Ceausescu’s order, as well as for allegedly collaborating with the former communist secret police. This has yet to be demonstrated. But newspapers say that several clerics have already come out to admit they had signed a pact with the devil: Nicolae, metropolitan bishop of Banat and Bartolomeu, metropolitan bishop of Transylvania, archbishops of Tomis and Alba, Teodosie and Andrei respectively.
Secular theologian Cristian Badilita sharply comments in the daily ZIUA that the national mourning that accompanied the death of Teoctist, who had decreed that “it was the church and not the politicians who should judge the clergy”, in a bid to protect his subordinates, is a “homage paid to a communist Patriarch”. Aware that the believers’ free conscience is incompatible with Marxist dogmas and totalitarian control, atheist regimes have exerted permanent pressure on religious denominations. The case of Poland is highly relevant. The ratio of collaborators in a country where the Catholic clergy was a stronghold of resistance, has been assessed at 15 to 20%. During the first years following WWII, Christian Orthodox Romanians paid a heavy price for their opposition to the regime. About 2000 politically active priests, most of them with ties to the far-right Iron Guard Movement or the National Pesants’ party (which today is the Christian Democratic party), or mere anti-Communists, ended up in jail. The Christian Orthodox Church was shattered to the ground, when Synod members died and their deaths remained shrouded in mystery, others sought exile, while the weakest simply caved in. Over the last decades of dictatorship, the Church chose to adapt and did so to the extent of accepting false clerics whose cassock concealed a uniform.
|
|
| |
WMA |
|
64kbps : |
1
2
3
|
|
|
128kbps : |
1
2
3
|
| |
MP3 |
|
|
64kbps : |
1
2
3
|
|
|
128kbps : |
1
2
3
|
| |
AAC+ |
|
|
48kbps : |
1
2
3
|
|
|
64kbps : |
1
2
3
|
 Historical mascot of
RRI |
| |
© 1999 - 2011 Copyright Radio Romania International |
|
2025-04-03
Print
Listen again