Bishop Vasile Lăzărescu, a confessor of justice and truth in the midst of communist persecution
Metropolitan Vasile Lăzărescu of Banat, Bishop of Caransebeș from 1934 to 1941, belongs not only to the group of scholars of the 20th century, but especially to the group of martyrs and confessors of the Orthodox faith in our country. He died on 21 February 1969.
Vasile Lăzărescu, born and brought up in Banat in a spirit of moral, spiritual and cultural authenticity, was not only the restorer of the Banat Metropolitanate and the founder of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Timișoara, whose moral and physical foundations he laid, but also the promoter of an ecumenical life and spirit, He was also the promoter of an ecumenical life and spirit, a profoundly Orthodox spirit, not syncretistic, a spirit that was nurtured in Banat and continues to this day, but also a national Christian spirit, which earned him the antipathy of the communist regime and later his forced removal from the chair of the Metropolitan of Banat.
His ecclesiastical career began as a professor at the Theological Academy of Sibiu, then at the Academy of Oradea, and in 1933 he was elected bishop of the historic diocese of Caransebeș. In the city of Caransebeș he carried out a beautiful spiritual and national activity. He supported and promoted national events and was appreciated by the cultural elite of the time. After the re-establishment of the bishopric of Timisoara in 1940, he was elected titular bishop of this diocese and fought for the fulfilment of an old wish of the Banat Romanians, which had been demanded on the Field of Freedom in Lugoj in 1848, namely the re-establishment of the old Metropolitanate of Banat. The ideal was achieved in 1947, when the Archdiocese of Timisoara became a metropolis and Dr. Vasile Lăzărescu was enthroned as the first Metropolitan of the re-established Metropolitanate of Banat.
Although at first a close friend of Prime Minister Petru Groza, relations between the two later deteriorated because, since the full establishment of the communist regime after the abolition of the monarchy, the Metropolitan did not hesitate to speak out against the regime and its policies, to criticise it vehemently and to demonstrate its doctrinal and ideological fragility. The Securitate opened a file on him as early as 1950, and several informers were recruited, even from the Metropolitan’s entourage.
In December 1954, the Securitate proposed to act with the aim of kidnapping Metropolitan Lăzărescu as its agent. To this end, enough evidence was gathered to suggest that the Metropolitan had a politically ‘tainted’ past, such as being a member of the National Peasant Party, with close links to leading elements of that party. He is also credited with a pastoral-missionary and national visit to Bessarabia and Transnistria in 1940, where he was a zealous anti-Communist propagandist, writing several articles and pamphlets criticising the Communist regime in the USSR and calling for a struggle against it[1].
After 23 August 1944, he was accused of surrounding himself with “enemy elements” with whom he supported the anti-communist struggle. In addition, he supported all those oppressed by the repressive regime or anti-communist organisations, such as the “Sumanele Negre” organisation or the anti-communist organisations in the Banat Mountains[2].
The security forces drew up a well-thought-out plan to blackmail Lăzărescu or to offer him two alternatives: total collaboration with the regime or deprivation of liberty. His verticality and his spiritual and national convictions led Metropolitan Lazarescu to unreservedly refuse any kind of collaboration with the regime, which he said was “fighting against its own people”[3].
Thus, over several years (1950-1961), the Securitate, with the help of several people close to the Metropolitan, compiled a dossier of irregularities and fictitious financial frauds, a veritable collection of intrigues and falsifications. The case of Metropolitan Vasile Lăzărescu was submitted to the Synod, which was under pressure to remove him from office. The Synod met in November 1961 and decided to appoint a Synodal Commission to investigate the charges against him. The Great Church Assembly was convened on 17 December. During the debates, several members, who had been blackmailed and set up by the security forces, criticised the ‘misconduct’ in Timisoara. In response to these criticisms, Patriarch Justinian pointed out that it was not the Church leadership that was to blame for these irregularities, but in most cases the subordinate bodies, the diocesan councils and, in particular, the accounting department4. In an attempt to save the Metropolitan, Patriarch Justinian clarified the canonical position for the catechesis of a hierarch. In the case of Lazarescu, however, the Synodal Commission ignored this point of view. Moreover, the interrogation of the Metropolitan on 15 and 16 December 1961 took place in an inquisitorial atmosphere, dominated by the idea that he should be found guilty and deposed[5].
The Synod decided that Metropolitan Lăzărescu was guilty of embezzlement, but contrary to the expectations and instructions of the Securitate, which had ordered his castration, he was removed from office and sent to the Saturday Monastery of the Upper Monastery. As a result of the moral offences committed against him, his health deteriorated, his heart was affected and he had to be admitted to hospital, although the Securitate forced him to leave Timișoara by 1 January 1962. Otherwise, he could have been sent to the monastery in a harsher form, his rank and implicitly his pension, set at 1200 lei per month, would have been increased, and he would have been forced to retire to the monastery as a simple novice and to the most difficult obediences, being stripped of his priestly garb and tried according to the penal code[6].
On 29 December, the Metropolitan was taken to a clinic in Timișoara, where he underwent surgery. As a precaution against the communist regime and because of the consequences that would follow, the doctor who operated on him urgently discharged him and advised him to find another hospital. Here, despite treatment, the illness progressed and the Securitate took sufficient care to ensure that his health deteriorated[7].
The Securitate, through the Department of Health and Social Welfare of the Timișoara Municipal Council, sent an address to the hospital where the Metropolitan was admitted, ordering his emergency examination and discharge, although the doctors responded with extreme reservations about his state of health and its degenerative nature, as the hierarch’s illness was likely to get progressively worse. But the situation suited the Securitate and its plans to eliminate Metropolitan Vasile Lăzărescu completely from the scene[8].
On 29 January 1962, the Regional Party Committee ordered his release from hospital and his urgent transfer to the Brâncoveanu monastery in Brașov County. The Metropolitan was not allowed to go near the Metropolitan’s residence, nor was he allowed to take much with him. When he arrived at the Brâncoveanu monastery, he was offered a cell in the basement of the building, as the Securitate had contributed to the Metropolitan’s deteriorating health.
Seven weeks after his arrival at the monastery, due to the misery in which he was living and the lack of clothing, food and necessary medicines, he sent a telegram to the Patriarch asking him to order the leadership of the Timișoara Metropolitanate to send him his personal belongings, but the telegram remained unanswered and unresolved, probably not even reaching the Patriarch. Although he received a monthly pension of 1200 lei, he had to pay the monastery rent and maintenance of 1100 lei per month, making it impossible for him to live on the remaining 100 lei, especially as he was ill and medicines were quite expensive. This was probably well thought out and analysed by the Securitate. The Metropolitan’s only comfort in this monastery was its abbot, Ioan Dinu, a man of great culture and humanity. It was from here that the Metropolitan wrote a memorandum to the authorities, in which he declared that he was not guilty and that everything that had happened to him was a “work”. The memorial also remained without result or response[9].
In July 1962, in defiance of the communist regime, the Metropolitan secretly left the monastery and went to Băile Herculane for treatment. The Securitate authorities were immediately informed and the case reached Emil Bodnăraș, who urgently ordered him to be picked up and forcibly sent to the Cernica monastery so that he could be separated from the priests of the Archdiocese of Timișoara and Caransebeș and placed under closer surveillance[10].
Here, as in the Brâncoveanu monastery, he was given an unhealthy cell whose windows broke at the first gust of wind. The floor was rotten, giving off an unbearable musty smell, and the insects slowly made their way through it. The room also had access to the cellar, which created a chilly atmosphere.
After the visit to Buziaș and Timișoara, which the Metropolitan made in secret and without the approval of the state authorities, he managed to gather several priests around him, who started a campaign to inform the faithful of the real reason for the Metropolitan’s removal from his seat. He was immediately returned to Cernica, where he was forced to stay without the right to leave the monastery.
In view of the history of the Metropolitan’s activity, his disobedience to the regime, his disregard for all directives and decisions, as well as for the communist state organs, several informers were infiltrated among the monks to observe the following problems: to ascertain their attitude towards the communist regime, their activities and concrete manifestations, to identify the persons with whom they were in contact and to verify them[11].
At the same time as directing the Securitate agents, the aim was to establish other agents who would be able to contact the Metropolitan directly and be in as close contact with him as possible, in order to ensure that data could be obtained on several lines of information. The Metropolitan’s correspondence was also intercepted as a surveillance measure.
In April 1965, Metropolitan Vasile Lăzărescu submitted a request to the Synod for his moral and professional rehabilitation, arguing in 20 pages that he was not guilty because the Tribunal of Timișoara had decided that the sums spent and found irregular by the investigating bodies had been managed for the benefit and needs of the Metropolitanate[12].
Vasile Lăzărescu intended to ask for a place to live in Bucharest after the Synod had discussed his memorial, in order to look after his health. He did not want to return to the Metropolitan See of Timișoara, but only to be dismissed. The memorial remained unanswered, which deeply angered Lăzărescu.
In Cernica, Metropolitan Lăzărescu did not communicate with the monastery, except with Metropolitans Efrem and Tit Simedrea, both of whom were forced to live here, and very rarely was he taken to see a doctor in Bucharest, when he was allowed to.
Feeling quite weakened by the illness caused by the actions of the Securitate and their servants to compromise his person, as well as by the direct actions of oppression of his life by slowly poisoning him with tea, Metropolitan Lazarescu drew up his will, leaving all his property to the Banat Metropolitanate and his grandchildren. His last testamentary wish was that his mortal remains, placed in the coffin he had prepared, should be placed in the crypt to the right of the entrance to the basement of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Timisoara, where he had established the Necropolis of the Banat Metropolitans. The Metropolitan also informed Patriarch Justinian of this testamentary wish, asking him to intervene if it was not respected[13].
In 1966, Lăzărescu was released from Securitate surveillance and his file was closed because he no longer posed a real danger to the regime, as illness had confined him to his bed and he no longer had the physical strength to communicate with the outside world.
On 21 February 1969 he died in the monastery of Cernica, found dead in the solitude and darkness of an unhealthy cell with partially broken windows, in filth. The monk who brought him his “usual” morning tea found him dead and informed the monastery administration, which informed the Patriarchate, which informed the Banat Metropolitanate, which contacted the family, namely the Metropolitan’s nephew, who went to Cernica and took him to Banat in the coffin prepared by the Metropolitan for burial. Despite his wish to be buried in the Metropolitan’s Crypt in the basement of the Metropolitan’s Cathedral, his foundation, this was not granted and he was buried in the family crypt in his native town of Cornești, Timiș County. The Metropolitan’s funeral was simple and hurried, attended only by a few priests from neighbouring parishes, and the then Metropolitan of Banat was also present. It was only after 1989, at the insistence of the Lăzărescu family to respect the Metropolitan’s will, that he was reburied in the basement of the Metropolitan’s Cathedral in Timișoara.
As an epilogue to the persecutions suffered by Metropolitan Vasile Lăzărescu and his death in the witness of truth, justice and freedom, but especially of the right Orthodox faith, we reproduce a quote from an informative note, in which the wife of a priest from Timișoara, in a conversation with a security agent, said: “Our Metropolitan is a hero. When times change, he will be a great man, because with the missing money he helped the families of those imprisoned by the communists”[14].
Indeed, Metropolitan Lăzărescu was and will remain a hero in the memory of all the people of Banat and those who knew him, because he managed to remain untainted by all the communist temptations, he managed to keep his Church and his flock intact and untouched by atheist ideas, he fought for the truth, identifying himself with the poor and oppressed by the regime, for which he had to suffer and for which he gave his life with dignity, joining the gallery of confessors of the Romanian nation.
(Fr. Petrică Zamela – Diocese of Caransebeș)
[1] Archives of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives, Informative Fund, file 177139, vol. XII, f. 40.
[2] Ibidem, f. 42.
[3] Ibid, f. 44.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid, f. 140.
[6] Ibid, vol. X, f. 147.
[7] Ibid, vol. IV, f. 20-36.
[8] Ibidem, f. 40; Lăzărescu Family Archive, Unorganized file, act of the medical commission’s finding for the examination of Dr. Vasile Lăzărescu (unpaginated).
[9] Archives of the National Council for the Study of the Archives of the Former Securitate, Informative Fund, file 177139, vol. II, f. 10.
[10] Ibidem, vol. IV, f. 5.
[11] Ibidem, vol. I, f. 175.
[] Ibid, f. 178.
[12] Ibid, f. 233.
[13] Ibid, f. 265.