Father Ananias was a natural orator, endowed with great percussive power

Amnesty decrees began to appear again from 1964. But our T.B.C. section remained, even though, as sick people, we should have been among the first to benefit from these decrees. Here and there they left us, but it was as if they didn’t know. We were on a par with the “Zarca”, from which hardly anyone left. One day Father Ananias came to me and asked me to contribute a satirical and humorous column to a literary meeting that was being held with the approval of Colonel Christmas. I gladly accepted, because such a proposal honoured me, it was perhaps a confirmation of the humour I had been practising since high school.

His part of the programme was more than masterful, it astonished, infused optimism, awakened from sleep even the most dishevelled temperaments, slipping on the slope of despair, as in the case of Ionescu Gr. Ion, the most seriously ill among us. It was an original literary gift, offered under equally original conditions. Excerpts from the play “Miorița”, recited and performed by the playwright himself, brought me down to my awkward lyrical debut. Father Ananias was a natural orator, endowed with much percussive power.

(Gheorghe Penciu – Candidates for Eternity, Crater Publishing House, Bucharest, 1997, pp. 218-219)