Dumitru Uță – The holy unmercenary
Doctor Dumitru Uță was one of the saints of communist prisons, a true doctor without money. He was imprisoned in Aiud from ’41 or ’42 until 1964. From ’47 to ’48 he was in Zarca (the building for those who couldn’t be released) until his release. He was a man of deep faith in God and great devotion to his fellow men.
God had given him a good face: tall, with blue eyes, a small bald head and a short moustache… After curing the head of the Aiud prison, Major Munteanu, of typhus, he became the most influential voice after the head of the prison until ’47 – ’48. So he was allowed to leave the prison whenever he wanted to get medicines and other things, and he always came back very loaded, with full bags. Once he even disturbed the management with what he could collect, foreign medicines and so on, almost a wagon load. Everyone in the dungeon asked for his help, the guards and all the staff often called him to their homes for various health problems of relatives and acquaintances.
That’s how he met Veronica, the daughter of one of the guards, to whom he taught English… Veronica was so moved by this man that she waited 20 years for him to be released. They were married in 1967, after she had sought him out. Apparently, Dr. Uță, filled with the Spirit, did not think of marriage at all. He married Veronica only to repay her expectation and love. She became for him, as she would later say, a true “soul mother”. Dumitru Uță amazed with his great energy, he simply forgot to eat, so much so that those close to him often had to feed him…
During epidemics, he was so dedicated that he left everything and his assistants, who wanted to help him, had to give a thousand vaccinations a day.
He fasted devoutly and gave the others the morsel of meat that happened to come on Wednesdays or Fridays. At some point, the opportunity arose to have recourse and thus be released, which many asked for.
This was also suggested to Doctor Uță, to which he replied, “Where can I be of more use, here or outside?” And he remained in prison. He spent a year in the cell with Father Marcu and Alexandru Ștefănescu, who remembers how they read the whole Bible together. It was the doctor who read aloud to everyone. Doctor Uță made all kinds of surgical instruments, tweezers, scalpels, with which he operated in the prison. There were times when doctors from Bucharest came to Aiud to learn medicine from him. When he got out of prison, he was given a job as a doctor in the countryside. He spent all day in the “hospital” he had set up. In a short time he became the most popular man in the surrounding villages. He was not paid for his work. And how the people would have loved to show their gratitude! But their doctor ate almost nothing, only fruit, and he didn’t get any of that either… The villagers thought of a more discreet way of giving him something: they unpacked their baskets of fruit in the garden, unseen, unnoticed. And so, throughout the summer and autumn, piles of fruit could be seen under the trees in Dr Uță’s garden, just like in fairy tales. The popularity of the fruit alarmed the Securitate.
It was decided from above that the doctor should be given a post in Bucharest, so that his “aura” would be lost… – the doctor asked for Hospital 9, Neurology. He was not allowed to take his final examinations and was therefore kept in a more modest position… But he imposed himself with great dedication and competence, so much so that everyone called him “the great doctor” – here Veronica finds him in ’67.
They had a son, Mircea. Dr Uță’s wish was that his son would serve God and become a priest, which he did. He left his wife and son with this great lesson: to do everything for your neighbour as for Christ. Veronica continued to write regularly to Father Mark, asking for his advice.
(Testimony of Father Athanasius Stefanescu – Confession of a Christian. Father Mark of Sihăstria, edited by the monk Filoteu Bălan, Petru Vodă Publishing House, 2007, pp. 43-45; Rost Magazine, Year X, Number 106, February 2012, p. 31)