Father Gheorghe Dragomirescu the confessor

Born in 1915 to a poor peasant family from Blăjani, Buzău County, Gheorghe Dragomirescu attended the “Chesarie Episcopul” Seminary in Buzău and then, with his salary as cantor in the church of his native village, he attended the Faculty of Theology in Cernăuți.

After several services in the parish of Mărăcineni and in the monastery of Barbu, in 1946 he was appointed to the parish of Lopătari, Buzău County. During the interwar period, out of love for his fellow men and for his faith, he was animated by the political currents that propagated spiritual change in the country.

He was always against the use of violence as a means of political imposition in the state, being a spiritual and material support for his faithful. In this way he kept them constantly at the altar of the parish where he served. This was demonstrated when, after his arrest and trial by the communist authorities in 1949, all the faithful of the parish, including representatives of communist organisations, demanded his release because they supported Father Dragomirescu’s innocence.

As a result, he was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, commuted to one year’s imprisonment, and subjected to extremely harsh interrogations in the Buzău Securitate Prison. Following the arrests in 1959, the priest was again detained and, together with several close followers, was included in a subversive group on suspicion of “conspiring against the social order”.

He was investigated again, but died on the night of 27-28 August 1959. In order to cover up the crime, Securitate officials ordered him to be tried, and on 7 October 1959 the priest was sentenced to nine years in prison! According to some witnesses, the priest was strangled with barbed wire.

(Adrian Nicolae Petcu, “Memory of the Church in Images: Father Gheorghe Dragomirescu from Lopătari” in Ziarul Lumina, electronic edition of 9 January 2010)