Doctor Teofil Mija, the supplicant

I was in a cell for years with Doctor Teofil Mija, although we fell together. I also did a kind of vespers, I didn’t have the exact time. After we had done part of the sleep, we would wake each other up, we would try to do it together. We were in solitary confinement in Gherla and a militiaman saw us getting up at night, kneeling down and praying, there were several of us in the cell. He stopped us, we weren’t allowed to do it as a group, that’s what he meant.

As I told you, Teofil Mija and I used to get up at night, he on top of me or he on top of him, and we would go and pray. We would lie down. We’d go to pray around 12 o’clock.

(Interview by Virgil Totoiescu – Aiudule, Aiudule, edited by Dragoș Ursu and Ioan Ursu, Renașterea Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 2001, p. 78)