June 9, 2019 - "The Pope's Visit to Romania"

Last weekend Pope Francis visited Romania. On Sunday, June 2, 2019, on the last day of his visit, the Holy Father presided over a Divine Liturgy in the small town on Blaj, the heartland of the country’s Greek-Catholic Church.  Although the largest religious denomination in Romania is Orthodox, a small percentage is Catholic.  Some of the Romanian Orthodox entered into union with Rome in 1700.  They kept their Byzantine liturgy and Eastern-rite traditions.  During the Divine Liturgy in Blaj, Pope Francis declared “blessed” seven of the Greek-Catholic bishops who had died a martyr’s death in the decades following the suppression of the Eastern-rite Romanian Church in 1948.
 
Pope Francis remarked that “in the face of fierce opposition from the regime, they demonstrated an exemplary faith and love for their people.  With great courage and interior fortitude, they accepted harsh imprisonment and every kind of mistreatment, in order not to deny their fidelity to their beloved church.”
 
Pope Francis continued his remarks by noting that these “pastors and martyrs for the faith re-appropriated and handed down to the Romanian people a precious legacy that we can sum up in two words:  freedom and mercy.”
 
Here are the names of the newly beatified bishops:  Iuliu Hossu, who had been imprisoned in 1954 and who died in a hospital in 1970; Vasile Aftenie, who died in prison in 1950; Ioan Balan who was imprisoned from 1950-54 and who died in a monastery in 1959; Valeriu Traian Frentiu, who died in prison in 1952; Ioan Suciu, died in prison in 1953; Tito Livio Chinezu, who died in prison in 1955; and Alexander Rusu, who died in prison in 1963.  Pope St. Paul Vi named Blessed Iuliu Hossu a cardinal but at Blessed Iuliu’s request, St. Paul VI did not reveal this elevation until after Bishop Hossu’s death. 
 
Recently Bishop John Michael Botean, who leads the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church’s only diocese outside of Romania commented on the beatification ceremony saying that it would be very, very important for his community.  Bishop Botean, who leads the Eparchy of St. George’s in Canton, Ohio that serves Romanian Catholics both in the U.S.A. and Canada, made reference to the pope’s decision to celebrate the beatification ceremony personally.  Bishop Botean continued:  “The big deal for me and our church is the beatification of our martyred bishops, that he is doing it himself, he is doing it in our home turf, and in a place of immense historical importance.”
 
Bishop Botean also commented on the now-beatified bishops: “They were the leaders of our church, they stayed faithful.  In their minds there were explicitly being faithful to the see of Peter.  They set just a profound witness for me as examples of firmness of conscience and willingness to sacrifice oneself.”

As I read about the courage of these newly beatified martyrs, I think of other martyrs whom Pope Francis has beatified during the last two years, including Blessed Stanley Rother from Oklahoma who was martyred in Guatemala in 1981 and beatified in 2017 and the nineteen martyrs from Algeria (including Bishop Pierre Claverie and seven Trappist monks) who were all killed by Islamic terrorists in Algeria between 1994 and 1996 and beatified in 2018. 
 
The Bishops of Algeria wrote in a press release in October 2018 that the purpose of the beatification of the nineteen martyrs of Algeria was not to make of those women and men heroes.  Rather it was to show that through these ordinary men and women we see how even in the darkest of times there are glimpses of hope.  And their conditional love, their country and their people show how “only love can end the alienating spirit of evil.”
 
These sentiments also apply in the case of Blessed Stanley Rother and the seven martyred Greek-Catholic bishops of Romania beatified by Pope Francis on June 2, 2019.  May they all pray for us!
 
Until next week,
Fr. John