Fr. Dimitrie Bejan (en)

A portrait of a Saint: Father Dimitrie Bejan

I have an unforgettable memory of that time, working in the prisoners’ clothing and personal belongings warehouse, full of admiration and deep respect for the priest Dimitrie Bejan from Hârlău. We were on the best of terms, even though there were about twenty-five years between us. That’s why he called me Aurică and I called him nea Mitică. He was the living symbol of a life dedicated to a cause, a righteous man, a character, a patriot with an immense love for the country and the people he came from. His modesty, simplicity and love for the people made him […]

Father Dimitrie Bejan – “A hero, a volcano of faith, a mountain of a character”

A hero, a volcano of faith, a mountain of a character. He was a military priest on the Eastern Front. He began his fight against atheism in the camps for Romanian soldiers in the USSR, when he refused to join the Tudor Vladimirescu Division, made up of Romanians who had accepted re-education in order to return to their country. In 1948 he was sent to Bucharest for trial. He passed through several prisons in the country. After his release, he continued to be persecuted and tortured. (Ioan Ianolide – Return to Christ. Document for a New World, Bonifaciu Publishing House, […]

Father Dimitrie Bejan – a great hero of our Christian and national life

Another great hero of our Christian and national life is Fr. Dimitrie Bejan, who took the apostolate to the heart of Siberia. There he made our Orthodoxy known and maintained the spiritual life of all those in the camp, Orthodox and Catholics. On feast days he would celebrate with a big bucket of Holy Communion weighing ten kilos, and the Russian women would come and knock on the camp gate to call “Batushka Bejan” for Holy Communion, Holy Mass and other religious services… There, in Russia, Father Bejan had been sentenced to death, but, like the Apostle Paul, he found […]

A priest with a novel like life

In 1960-1961, after the quarrels with the Westerners, the leadership was thinking of liberating us, and so we found ourselves back in Aiud. We were put in a cell with three priests. Father Toma Gherasimescu had been a missionary of the Romanian Orthodox Church, had travelled the country, visiting towns and villages, and had written many books and pamphlets of a theological and moral nature. Father Grigorie Băbuș was abbot of the Cheia-Prahova monastery, then librarian at the Patriarchate and confessor at the Theological Faculty in Bucharest. Father Dimitrie Bejan was from Hârlău and about fifty years old. He had […]

The last meeting with Father Dimitrie Bejan

Irina, my beautiful two-year-old from Bărăgan and goddaughter of Fr. Dimitrie Bejan, told me that Fr. Dimitrie would like to see me once more before the big farewell. So, in the summer of 1994, when I came to Romania for a short time, I decided to go to Hârlău, where Fr. Bejan lived for the last part of his life. Together with Ciprian, at the wheel of the car, I drove through Codrii Pașcanilor, a place that became part of history after the battles between the Romanians and the Russians during the Second World War. Ionel also showed us his […]

Father Dimitrie Bejan – Biography

Whenever I come across memorable pages about little-known personalities, I remind myself how poor we are. Spiritually and culturally. Because out of carelessness or ignorance we remain strangers to the values of our nation, we do not seek their work and we do not try to learn from their lives. Such a person was Father Dimitrie Bejan from Hârlău, a priest – martyr, an enlightened spirit, a model of honesty and Christian life. With our meagre resources, we have come a little closer to the life and writings of Father Dimitrie, not so close as to claim to know him, […]

The beginning of the Golgotha in the Romanian prisons

On the street, on my way home, I was greeted by a red-haired, unshaven, burly man, flanked by a smaller, skinny man. Behind them, two citizens with their right hands in their pockets. They saluted me. And I walked on, I could see the encirclement. I knew I’d been followed for a long time, step by step. My “shadow” was following me. I knew, I saw, I waited. The two behind me, hurried past me, ten metres, and stopped at the corner. It was nine o’clock in the evening. Few people on the street. A car at the corner. The […]

Oranki – Memories from captivity

Father Dimitrie Bejan is far from being properly consecrated in the hierarchy of Romanian concentrationist literature, overshadowed by much better known names such as Paul Goma, N. Steinhardt, Elisabeta Rizea or Ion Ioanid. This is somewhat unfair, given the unimaginable biographical path taken by the author of Oranki. Memories of Captivity (and five others published so far: The Great Vifornița, The Joys of Suffering, The Walled Boundary, The Cursed Village and Simple Stories). Born in 1909, a graduate of the Theological Institute of Iași and of the Faculty of History, for a time a member of Dimitrie Gusti’s research teams, […]