Constantin Oprișan – The fall of a martyr under the weight of the cross…

Whenever we turn to the lives of the saints, we notice that the accounts of the martyrs’ martyrdom are written in an aestheticised style, although the circumstances described are in fact terrible. Of course, the motivation for this delicate approach is justified by the severity and brutality of the sufferings endured by the holy Martyrs, which, if recounted in detail, would frighten to despair instead of inspiring strong faith. For this reason, the words that make up the life of the Martyrs and the victims of righteous faith are carefully worded in order to soften the brutality that all martyrdom entails.

But perhaps it is precisely for this reason that we fail to realise that there is nothing spectacular or artistic about martyrdom, for however spiritually uplifting and mystically sanctifying it may be, it is macabre to the eye and ear. And it is precisely because martyrdom involves pain beyond the limits of human nature that the courage of the martyrs was not always linear, at the same level of confession from the beginning of the martyrdom to the end. Some of them faltered in their faith and fell for a moment. And now we are going to talk about just such a case, because the blessed confessor Constantine Oprișan also had a temporary fall.

And it is important to stop and realise that we can learn as much from the falls of confessors as from their sublime rises. Therefore, the wavering faith of the confessors should not be a reason for us to stumble, but a reason to learn lessons that, though painful, are a source of much wisdom in the struggle for salvation. Just as Dumitru Bordeianu learnt from his own fall to stand up even more manfully for the right confession, just as Gheorghe Calciu learnt from his own fall to stand up and dedicate himself to Christ with the ardent zeal of an apostle, so too the fall of the confessor Constantin Oprișan was a lesson for him to stand up even stronger and dedicate himself completely to Christ, perfecting himself through suffering.

But before reaching perfection, the blessed Constantine had to go through terrible trials, which at times shook him in his confession. And one of the episodes that shows such a wavering is told by Ioan Ianolide, at the beginning of his re-education in Gherla prison:

“I have brought you here to show you the true face of the people. You are the victims of these criminals and bandits whom you call bosses. You have accepted them in good faith and adopted their poisonous ideas. You will understand their lies from their own mouths. See, Constantin Oprișan will speak to you now.”

Constantin Oprișan was the leader of the Brotherhood of the Cross, loved and trusted by these young people. He had gone through all the horrors of re-education in Pitești, as someone who was considered a bandit with authority among the legionaries. He spoke like this:

– I was born on the night of an orgy, to a drunken father and a syphilitic mother. I am half idiot and half mad. I’m gnawed by sadistic and vile desires. I’ve corrupted myself with my sister, my mother and anyone who got in my way. I’ve killed. I’ve stolen. I’m a crook by trade and a liar by profession. I’m a drunk and I’ve done everything dirty…

Amazement, astonishment, despair. The students didn’t know what to think. Some went mad on the spot, some committed suicide, some didn’t believe and others accepted re-education, if not from the first day, then in the days or months that followed, because the ‘lesson’ continued with similar arguments. Those who resisted, however, went into battle. They were disfigured. Constantin Oprișan himself was beaten, but he still had the strength to whisper:

– “Forgive me! Be strong! You can’t resist, but don’t accept re-education either!”[1]

In connection with these issues, in an interview with Father Gheorghe Calciu, the following question was asked: “Some people talk about the fact that he would have succumbed to prison at some point. What do you think of such opinions?”[2] Father Calciu, who was himself one of the students who had experienced the deep wounds of re-education, gave a delicate answer that should lead us not to judge too hastily the cases that took place in Pitești during the terrible re-education through continuous torture:

“Costache Oprișan was one of the most tormented in the prison. Because he was in charge, and all the torturers tried to make Costache Oprișan give in or break him, so that all the young people who looked up to him would lose their balance. I didn’t stay with him all the time. I don’t know whether he gave in or not, but I do know that he was tortured to such an extent that when I sat with him in the cell, his lungs were completely destroyed. If he broke or if he didn’t break… Nobody was left in one piece. Except those who died. So we can’t make such a judgement. It was superhuman conditions”.

Octavian Voinea, who also underwent re-education, writes in his memoirs that “Țurcanu succeeded in ‘disciplining’ [Oprișan n.n.] in the sense of carrying out his orders, but he did not succeed in turning his conscience into a convinced communist, as he did with others. This Costache Oprișan was too strong. “[3]

In fact, Constantine foresaw from the beginning the inevitable falls that were to follow the dramatic events of Pitesti, as evidenced by the admonition he gave to some of his suffering brothers just before the tortures began: “I cannot see clearly the method they will use against us, but I believe it will be the method of violence, trying to destroy in us faith, unity, brotherhood and comradeship… Be prepared for the battle that will be waged in the quagmire of despair. Each one will emerge from this struggle alone, helpless, except for the mercy of God and the best that he has in him. The struggle will be long, and whoever has the strength and patience, convinced that it is just, will fall and rise again. All that remains is for us to sharpen our spiritual swords of love, unity and fellowship.”[4]

But in order to better understand why so many strong-willed and faithful characters like Constantin Oprișan, Gheorghe Calciu or Dumitru Bordeianu collapsed, we need to find out the causes that contributed to their collapse. As a result, if we follow in detail the martyrdom of Constantine, who is said to have been “the young man most severely beaten at Pitești”, we will end up in a dilemma. What happened at Pitești was so inhuman and atypical of what we know of the history of oppression of any kind that we can ask a legitimate question: Didn’t Pitești redefine the limits, dimensions and meanings of martyrdom? Because there, torture was of unprecedented intensity, everything became an ordeal: food, sleep, physiological needs, even breathing. And the limits of suffering were so much redefined, especially with the emergence of two new dimensions of martyrdom:

The first dimension is given by the fact that the confessors are tortured by their former friends/acquaintances, who are now secretly re-educated and with whom they shared the same ideals until yesterday. And the fact that the re-education began suddenly, without the victims having been previously adjusted to the newly created situation, was such a shock to the soul that it broke many of the students who had passed through Pitești from the very beginning. And the confessor Constantin Oprișan was fully affected by this drama, even though he resisted it with unparalleled enduring heroism. Thus, one day, Constantin was presented in a room of the Pitești prison, greeted with false brotherhood by the re-educated students, and then the 180 degree turn followed. At a signal, he is beaten from all sides and practically trampled on for several hours, while they shout in his ears: “We, the re-educated youth, those of us who were previously under your command, will destroy you. You are to blame for our fate, and we will take from you everything you know, everything you have not declared to the Securitates… “[5]

The second dimension is given by the fact that, apart from a few exceptions, confessors did not have the right/possibility to escape torture by dying. If in the early times the mucilages escaped the pains of torture by dying a cruel death, in Pitești death was a luxury that was not allowed to everyone, but at best it was “offered” in such a way that it became another method of surrender. Eugen Țurcanu himself, the main instrument of re-education, admits as much: “You will die when I want you to. Slowly, with a spoon!”[6] The same demonic threat was also personally promised to Constantine on two occasions by the same Țurcanu: “By my hand you will die, but not now, but when I want you to!”[7] and “This is how you’ll die! Slowly! Slowly, slowly! Drop by drop.”[8]

If we take into account these two new dimensions of martyrdom, we will realise that we must bend ourselves with deep consideration and understanding to the falls not only of the confessors, but also of the victims who have never recovered from this diabolical experiment. It is therefore essential to understand that there were indeed “superhuman conditions”.

For the same reasons, the memoirist Neculai Popa, who also underwent re-education in Pitesti, tells us that “no one who has not known even a moment of the hell of Pitești will be able to understand or imagine what was going on in the souls of those people whose moral strength had been defeated by physical helplessness, the hope of despair, and death had become a privilege that not everyone could enjoy”[9].

And in order to better understand the destructive power of the re-education at Pitesti, Aurel Vișovan, one of the martyrs who also underwent this ordeal, points out that “events can be measured by the size of the people who faced them. Men like Costache Oprișan, Pop Cornel, Gioga Parizianu and so many others… Like tall trees, they withstood so many storms by remaining steadfast… Now they are broken in Pitești! The storm takes on demonic forms. There, history has stopped for the moment, giving way to the apocalypse. “[10]

With all these details in mind, let us try to approach the partial surrender of Constantine Oprișan with good intentions, in order to better understand the drama that this great confessor lived through and how he overcame it. Mihai Timaru’s testimony, recorded in his memoirs, will help us in this regard:

At the end of August 1951, in the famous torture cell 99 of the Gherla prison, the following were brought in Constantin Oprișan, Stuparu Mihai, Ghiță (Gheorghe) Calciu, Măgirescu Eugen, Păvăloaia, Virgil Bordeianu, Lică Condurache, all from Eugen Țurcanu’s team. Among those sent for re-education were Anghel Avram, Hențiu, Soare Ioan, Popescu Traian (called Maca), Maxim Virgil, Radu Ciuceanu, Gioga Parizianu and others.

The remark of the commemorator is interesting: “On the part of those who knew what was coming, there was a reluctance, a great reserve towards us”.[11] In this tense situation, after the evening call, Mihai Timaru reports that “Costache Oprișan approaches me and tells me that he knows me from hearsay, that he is a friend of Paragină and is happy to have met me personally. At one point, Costache Oprișan takes me aside and says: “You know I’m going to have to beat you up. I looked at him astonished, I didn’t know what he meant. And I asked him very fascinated: “But why do you have to hit me? “He measured me and said: “You’ll understand later.”[12].

We pause on these confessions for a moment to emphasise how much Costache Oprișan risked being re-educated by revealing the plan and warning Mihai Timaru of what would happen next. But this warning was Constantin Oprișan’s way of coming to terms with his new, ungrateful position, that of the tyrant of an innocent, as he himself had been before being transformed into what he had become. So this warning was both a way of asking for forgiveness before the deed was done, and proof of a courage that preceded the compromise he was about to make. What we have here is the psychology of a bargain with oneself: on the one hand, the surrender, the acceptance of which meant putting an end to one’s own suffering, and, on the other, the equally great courage that made this situation acceptable to the man who had run out of spiritual resources.

It did not take long for Eugen Țurcanu to appear. The newcomer addressed those destined for re-education with his favourite term, “bandits”, to which Mihai Timaru, not knowing what would follow, asked him to reply to the insult. The result was: – “Go get them, the bandits”. In typical re-education style, the clubs appeared out of nowhere and the demonic game began to unfold. At one point, Mihai Timaru sees “Costache Oprișan coming towards me and he starts beating me, but I feel his blows and I realise that they are different from the others’ blows. Oprișan’s eyes were filled with tears, and with each painful blow to my body, a drop of tears fell from Costache’s eyes. And then, and perhaps only later, I understood that he, Costache Oprișan, had to make his last test in front of Țurcanu in order not to be beaten and tortured: he had to beat Mihai Timaru”[13]. Through this paradoxical contrast of antagonistic feelings, of violence mixed with compassion and repentance, we can finally understand the great drama that Constatin Oprișan experienced: to see himself at the end of all patience and fighting resources, defeated, but without losing his humanity. It is impossible to put into words the bitterness of the weakness that Constantine experienced, that of sparing his body, exhausted by unbearable tortures, although he paid for it at the cost of torturing his own conscience and at the cost of hurting his love for his neighbour, whose drama he knew only too well.

It is only by putting ourselves in the shoes of the victims that we can understand something of the hell of Pitești, those of us who did not feel the dimensions of this tragedy for ourselves. However, when we talk about Pitești, I do not think we are wrong when we say that Constantin Oprișan and Eugen Țurcanu were, at least for a long time, “the two poles of existence”[14]: the one, the embodiment of human patience at its limit, and the other, the embodiment of wickedness taken to the extreme. Almost the entire process of re-education revolved around these two poles, as Țurcanu himself testifies in Gherla, when Blessed Constantine rises from the heavy slab of re-education and mutilates himself again for Christ:

“If this is the method of the ideal of which you speak, you will not attain happiness. Why have you not come up with rational arguments, worthy of scientists, as you call yourselves […] Why have you resorted to despicable, barbarous means of coercion and of forcing consciences? [You will not and have not achieved anything! Everything you think you have achieved is a figment of your sick mind!”

– “Shut up! That because of you I have delayed so much the work of transformation that I have undertaken to achieve!”[15] And from here we understand that with these words Țurcanu indirectly admits his defeat to Constantine, because although Constantine lost a battle at Pitești, in the end he won the war of re-education with Țurcanu at Gherla. God had the last word!

Looking through all these disturbing testimonies, perhaps the hardest lesson we have to learn from the happy confessor Constantine is this harsh truth, later formulated by Ion Sadovan: “Opportunities do not make a man weak, they only show him how weak he is. Those of us who did not have the opportunity to show how weak we are should thank God that we were not there!”[16]

But just as God said to the divine Apostle Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”, so also the happy confessor Constantine Oprișan sanctified himself and made himself perfect “in weakness, in slander, in distress, in persecution, in distress for Christ’s sake”. (2 Corinthians 12:10)

And if we return to the words of the long-suffering Constantine from the beginning, that “the struggle will be long, and he who has strength and patience, convinced that it is just, will fall and rise again”, and “everyone will come out of the midst of this struggle alone, helpless except by the mercy of God and by what is best in him”, we realise that they had a prophetic character, for it was through these two that Constantine rose from the mire of despair: By the power of God and by his own powers, which were none other than “the love and goodness that filled his soul”.

Thus, after his dramatic fall under the weight of the cross of re-education, the happy confessor Constantin Oprișan would later rise to the sublime, ascending in holiness. And here is the eloquent testimony of Father Gheorghe Calciu: “He prayed all day long. He never said anything bad about those who tortured him, but spoke to us about Jesus Christ”[17].

This is why we must pay tribute to this great confessor, who suffered so much in the communist prisons and who, by his own example, teaches us the most difficult lessons of salvation: to rise to holiness, no matter how difficult our circumstances, and to love our enemies.

Rejoice, great Confessor Constantine, that you have endured pain beyond nature and have sown the seeds of the great martyrs! Rejoice, great confessor Constantine, who in prison, with so many others, climbed the Golgotha of the Romanian nation!

(Dan Tudorache)

[1] Ioan Ianolide, Return to Christ – a document for a new world;

[2] Pr. Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa, The Mystery of Love – The Martyrs of the Romanian Nation;

[3] Octavian Voinea, The Massacre of the Romanian Students;

[4] Dumitru Bordeianu, Confessions from the Swamp of Despair;

[5] Aurel Vișovan, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me, 3rd edition, Napoca Star Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2006, p. 36;

[6] Tache Rodaș, Mărturii din iadul temnițelor comuniste, by Gheorghe Andreica;

[7] Ștefan Ioan I. Davidescu, Journey through Hell, vol. II;

[8] Virgil Maxim, Hymn to the Cross. Abecedar duhovnicesc pentru un frate de croce, 2nd edition, Antim Publishing House, Bucharest, 2002, p. 89;

[9] Neculai Popa, Descent into Hell;

[10] Aurel Vișovan, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

[11] Mihai Timaru, Amintiri de la Gherla, Editura de Vest, Timișoara, 1993, p. 55;

[12] ibidem;

[13] idem, p. 56;

[14] Ștefan Ioan I. Davidescu, Călăuză prin infern, vol. II;

[15] Virgil Maxim, Hymn for the Cross Carried, vol. II, 2nd edition, Antim Publishing House, 2002, pp. 273-274;

[16] Mihai Timaru, op. cit., p. 87;

[17] Pr. Gheorge Calciu – idem.