A martyred hierarch

It was the late winter of 1949. I don’t know if it was a stormy winter, but it was certainly bleak. The faith was in mortal danger. Its disappearance was being relentlessly pursued. The Church, a solid institution of the past, stood in the way of the ‘new times’. The atheist persecution also targeted Orthodoxy, the ancestral faith of the Romanians. The new atheist regime wanted to silence and enslave the altar servants.

Priests and hierarchs rose up against this seemingly uncontrollable trend, some of whom paid for their courage with their lives. Among them was Bishop Gregory Leu, who held the bishopric of Huși until it was suppressed by the Communists in 1949.

The diocese of Huși also included some of the counties beyond the Prut: Cahul, White Fortress, Ismail. The hierarch Gregory, who had also been the pastor of the diocese of Argeș, was a wise and tenacious organiser of Romanian Orthodox missionary activity beyond the borders of the country and a perfect connoisseur of how to organise it. The new masters and the occupying power wanted to take possession of this organisational structure. Bishop Gregory kept the secret, which annoyed his superiors and infuriated the new masters of the country. This ‘guilt’ was compounded by the fact that the bishop, in his youth a lay priest, had a son, also a priest, who had fled to the West, where he organised the Romanian Orthodox resistance against the communist regime in Romania. For such serious ‘sins’, the powers that be decided to end Vlad Gregory. They summoned him to Bucharest and informed him of the dissolution of the diocese of Huși. One month after this sad decision, which led to the disappearance of one of the most famous dioceses of Romanian Christianity, illustrated by a series of brilliant hierarchs, from Dosoftei to Veniamin Costache to Antonovici, Bishop Gregory Leu died in circumstances that have not yet been clarified. It was 1 March 1949. Three years later, the Soviet secret services set a death trap for Father Vasile Leu, the bishop’s son, who had become a symbol of Romanian anti-communist resistance abroad. Father Vasile Leu was in Vienna at the Romanian parish. He had been called by the Romanian parishioners to pray with them for the salvation of the Romanian nation, which was in dire straits. After the service he was taken to his hotel, allegedly by mistake, through the Soviet occupation zone. He was arrested, sent to Siberia and sentenced to death. Together with Pan Halipa, after long and arduous international efforts, he managed to be transferred to Romania. Here he suffered a long and murderous imprisonment.

Two decades ago, the Romanian Orthodox Church decided to honour these martyrs. In Huși, in the diocesan cathedral, a memorial service was held at the tomb of Bishop Gregory, led by a choir of priests and led by Bishop Ioachim Vasluianul, then bishop-vicar of the diocese of Roman and Hușilor, then the first hierarch of the re-established diocese of Hușilor, who has since died.

Next to the bishop’s church, the martyred hierarch Gregory Leu sleeps in eternal peace. Perhaps his spirit is more at peace in heaven. The diocese for which he sacrificed himself has become a reality. Unfortunately, the consolation is not complete, because the boundaries of the diocese are still being shortened, and the missionary activity, of which Gregory Leu was a brilliant exponent, shows little sign of success in bringing home the lost sheep. But it is important that the wounds of the past have begun to heal. It is perhaps an expression of hope and a long-awaited healing for all.

(Grigore Ilisei – Ziarul Lumina)