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 way to be judged in his own country.

Sent home from the Siberian camp, he entered the heavy prisons of Romania. He was a pillar of our spiritual life. Even after his release, he tried to maintain the spiritual life, but like Father Gheorghe Calciu, even his brothers betrayed him. Condemned and eliminated by the others, he was forcefully retired and taken as a sick man back to his village in Hârlău.

These two fathers, Calciu and Bejan, I put them together for their beautiful way of thinking and their sacrificial life.

(Pr. Justin Pârvu – The life of Father Gheorghe Calciu according to his own and other testimonies, Christiana Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007, pp. 347-348)