“Father Ioan, an exceptional comrade hardened in suffering”
The “Jehovah’s Witnesses” of the Canal in the “Priests’ Brigade” had many qualities: they were hardworking, courageous, disciplined, enterprising and in solidarity with each other, a solidarity that went to the point of absurdity, but also some defects. […]
Above all, they hated priests, both Catholic and Orthodox. For them, the Pope of Rome was Mammon, and the priests were hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, lying priests who broke the law. […]
The Jesuits – we say this with sorrow because they were our comrades in suffering – were interested in the teaching of the Gospels only in those verses that could be interpreted as being against the priests. They knew them by heart and parroted them. In the brigade they considered themselves sheep among wolves, wise as serpents and innocent as doves, and the priests: “serpents, young vipers, blind shepherds who swallow the gnat and devour the camel”. […]
Here we put a little parenthesis to see that when God forgives, fate is merciless, it takes revenge.
Two years later, after the bankruptcy of the “Great Construction of the Danube-Black Sea Canal”, the prisoners were transferred to various prisons or other workplaces in the country. Some of the members of the “Priests’ Brigade” arrived in Aiud at a time when even “Captain” Dorobanțu’s prison, preparing for the “Great Re-education”, was going through a terrible isolation, burdened by hunger, cold and Cypriot oppression[1].
It so happened that the Jesuit priest Pădure, a “lion of the peninsula”, was imprisoned in Zarca, in a cell with Father Ioan, the former priest Silviu Iovan from Făgăraș.
Father Ioan had been arrested with the group of priests and nuns from the Vladimirești monastery, was an old Zarchist and an exceptional comrade, hardened by suffering, with proverbial self-control and the power of abstinence. With his morsel of bread or polenta and the soup he gave to those tormented by hunger, he saved dozens of unfortunates from certain death. Our Jesuit of the Priests’ Brigade was also hungry. And Father John would help them survive. For months, he often ate once a week, so that his food would complement the meal of the one who yesterday laughed at the hunger and inhumanity of the “wolves” of the Priests’ Brigade.
We do not know if the Jesuit fully understood the true Christian behaviour of the priest Ioan Iovan and to what extent he returned to better feelings towards the priesthood. And we don’t know if he really repented [but] what we do know is that Father Ioan is alive, he is in the monastery of Plumbuita, where, although he is slandered and harassed by the masters, he continues to praise God, to be merciful, to give everything, to have a pure heart, to perfect in the conscience of the faithful not hatred, but love, goodwill, mercy, the spirit of solidarity, altruism, seeking his own happiness in the desire to increase the happiness of others.
(Vasile Blănaru Flamură, Mercenaries of Hell. The curse of the files. Incredibile întâmplări din gulagurile românești, Vol. I, Elisavaros Publishing House, 1999, pp. 157-159)
[1] Allusion to the name of the political officer of the Canal, Toma Chirion, famous for his bestiality towards political prisoners.