Fr. Dumitru Bălașa (en)

“My dear ones, keep your faith no matter what comes next!”

They took me in 1959, to the Securitate on the 16th of September. “You have a gun at home. Give us the gun!” There was a reason. We went all the way home, they searched my house, then they took me away and kept us here in Drăgășani, in a cellar there, for I don’t know how long. One night they took us to Pitești. And there the torture began. The worst punishment in the world! Tortures, beatings! From 1:00 to 3:00 in the morning we were beaten. What happened? From 1:00 to 3:00 in the morning, they would beat […]

The “Patriarch” of Drăgășani

A great researcher and folklorist, an outstanding historian, an incomparable publicist, Fr. Dumitru Bălașa is the perfect image of the scholar who plunges untiringly into the mire of history to bring to light long-forgotten truths. Above all, Fr. Dumitru Bălașa was not a historian, but a priest. Serving in troubled times of severe communist oppression, the scholar-priest hid all his desires in the lap of the epitrachelion, often saying like Saint Job: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21)”! Father Dumitru Bălașa was born on 1 August 1911 in the village of Gușoieni in Vâlcea, […]