Father Galeriu, the peacemaker

The story of Father Galeriu’s life was told to us by Rodion and Ciprian, two of his four sons. Filtered through their childhood memories, the sparks of the grace of a preacher we would call paradigmatic for the end of the 20th century have reached us. This, after all, was Father Galeriu: the preacher in absolute condition, with unspeakably kind eyes and great love for people. He came to the world to reconcile it. He remained among us to watch over us and give us good advice from his place, from above.

Rodion and Cyprian are handsome men, with thick, bushy beards like their father. They fondly remember their childhood as it was: tormented and full of unpredictability. A single shadow of sadness. Their father had been absent for a long time: he had been taken away from home and imprisoned many times. Then he would have time for God and for his family.

“In our house, the door was always open,” says Rodion. “My mother lived between the door and the telephone. Like a crossroads. Except for liturgical times, when he was busy with God, my father answered all the calls from the parishioners. We couldn’t enjoy him. We rarely got to crack an Easter egg. Then he would leave. The church determined his schedule. In 1971, when I became a doctor in Parâncea, near Bacău, 40 km from where my father was born, I discovered a patient, a man in distress, who, after I had treated him, told me: “I was born in Răcătău in 1918. I am an old friend of your father’s. And now, at Easter, he has sent me 100 lei. And my father had left Parâncea in 1943”.

The destiny

Father Galeriu put on the cassock in 1943. He also got married. He married with 10,000 lei, the money he earned at the seminary. He won the first prize for his sermon. Nichifor Crainic and Gala Galaction saw great value in the young seminarian and decided to send him to Berlin to study. It was not to be. The war kept him at home. The Providence sent Galeriu to one of the poorest villages in Prahova: Podul Văleni. A small parish: about 90 families. During the war, he managed to restore the church. Only he knows how. That’s why the people have never forgotten him. Father Toma Chiricuță, one of the greatest preachers of his time, promised to take him to the institute in the capital. But he forgot him in the village. It wasn’t until 1948 that he arrived as a priest at St. Vasile’s Church in Ploiești, where he served for 25 years. In order to live as close to the church as possible, the priest built a small house with a living room and two rooms. In 1973, he was called to Bucharest. In the last years of his life, Father Galeriu seemed to get younger and younger. He answered all the calls from the country. The Orthodox students, whom he loved so much, organised conferences in all the university centres. During the 40 days of Lent, he had to be everywhere. At St. Sylvester’s Church in the capital, where he served, but also in Timisoara or Iași. At one point there were 40,000 parishioners at St Vasile’s. Father Galeriu had an absolutely sensational memory. He even knew the family trees of his parishioners.

His generosity knew no bounds.

Among his spiritual sons were Ioan Alexandru and Sorin Dumitrescu. He also confessed Horia Patapievici. Father Galeriu had no limits to his generosity when it came to supporting a spiritual son. On 13 December 1983, when Nichita Stănescu died, Dora called Sorin Dumitrescu, who contacted the priest. Ceaușescu had ordered Nichita to stay in the morgue for two days, until he was taken to the Writers’ Union. Father Galeriu came to the emergency hospital and took him to the Church of St. Sylvester to be watched over by Christians.

Enlightenment through theatre

“Father was a complex preacher,” says Ciprian. “He made a caravan of religious films. He would go around the villages and show the peasants films about the birth of Christ, about the crucifixion. He never followed any rules. During his university days, Father Galeriu was the leader of a group of students who were also actors. For two years, Father Galeriu staged religious plays. One day Toma Caragiu, the director of the Ploiesti Theatre, came to see my father because he was staging a play in which a confessor confessed to a prisoner. That’s when the police and the Securitate police got the idea. My father kept his memory alive, and after ’77 he held a funeral service for him every year.

The road to the canal

Because he told people that Christ, not Marx, was the true teacher, Father Galeriu was thrown into the cellar. He was on the Holy Sea fast when he was arrested in 1952. Two years earlier he had been arrested for not denouncing the liberal leader Victor Nicolau, whom his in-laws were hiding. The children were all young. The oldest brother was born in 1945. They were all at the Cheia monastery for the summer holidays. “My father left us for the feast and went to the parish. He never came back. The situation was difficult. My mother had no work, there were four children, the house was ransacked and he was arrested. Then he was taken to the canal. Gala Galaction escaped and wrote to Petru Groza about it: “Dear Petrică, I’m in a hurry. I mean, Gala was old and he was afraid that he wouldn’t die until he knew that my father was free”.

His return home

While the priest was in prison, the family didn’t starve. He was supported by the faithful. On Saturdays and Sundays, carts would arrive from the villages with flour, oil and poultry. In those days, every monastery had a Holy Mass for Galeriu. In a conversation with Dorin Popa, Father Popa told how he came home, newly released, and the children did not recognise him[1].

“It was the day of St. Dumitru. My wife had gone to the feast, then to a Christian. When I arrived at the gate, I came like a soldier from the front, with a sling on my back, unshaven. A Christian woman had come to us for some reason. She didn’t know me. She let me go through the gate first. When I got to the house, Ciprian and Seraphim – they were little – did not know me either. The other two were out. I began to ask them, methodically, as one asks children, this and that, how they are, but where is your mother and so on. Then, little by little, they came to their senses. Then the woman came. She said to me: “Man, even when you were at home we didn’t have as much as when you were away. “What do you mean? You took care of us?” “Yes. Every morning I would find a loaf of bread in one place. Someone had smuggled it in.”

Travelling on foot and in mind

Rodion continues: “In 1957, when I was 11 years old, I had my first experience of a long journey, a pilgrimage to the monasteries in northern Moldova, together with my father, mother and a group of apprentices. Everything that happened in those two or three weeks of summer comes back to me as if all the obstacles the world would put in your way could be overcome.

Going down from Putna to Sihăstria, we stopped at all the monasteries, using only the support that God gave us. We travelled in lorries, on wood, on barrels, on foot. At each monastery we were offered goodies: bitter cherry sorbet with cold water, raspberries, meals blessed by the monks at each sheepfold. I was in Sihăstria and one of the shepherds took me on a donkey. Just as my father and Father Cleopa were giving the blessing, I rode through them on the donkey, pushed by the shepherd.

Wherever I went, it was always a happy meeting, joyful and glorious in communion. All my life this has followed me. There wasn’t a summer, until my father fell ill, when we didn’t go on this journey”.

(Rodion Galeriu – Diary, electronic edition of April 5, 2004, apud And I was the disciple / apprentice of Father Galeriu, edited by Argentina Grămada Dragu, Reproexpres Publishing House, Valencia, pp. 118-121)

[1] Dorin Popa, With Father Galeriu between Genesis and Apocalypse.