Father Ioan Mitrică, martyr for Christ during the communist regime

Ioan Mitrică was born in the house of the Aromanian merchant Hristea Mitrică. Following the example of his older brother Marin, who had entered the priesthood, Ioan Mitrică attended the Theological Seminary “St. Gregory the Decapolite” in Craiova, class of 1928, and was ordained priest in 1937 by the Bishop of Râmnic Noul Severin, Vartolomeu Stănescu, in the church of his native village, dedicated to “St. Nicholas”. A worthy priest, he paid particular attention to the faithful, with whose help he collected money for the cemetery and the needs of the cult.

He helped the poor with money and food. The priest Ioan Mitrică persuaded the owner of the place, Grigore Pleșia, to open a school canteen, where he fed and then clothed 30-40 poor children[1].

With the help of the parish priest Mihail Mitran (1906-2002), he built a wooden bell tower in 1937 and covered the church with galvanised sheet metal in 1940. On 21 June 1942, a committee was formed to build a new church, and in August 1943, a building plan was approved by the famous architect Iancu Atanasescu. Work on the construction of a true cathedral was particularly intensive, with more than five cement wagons being used for the foundations in the summer of 1943. The Metropolitan of Oltenia, Nifon Criveanu, consecrated the foundation on 5 September 1943, together with a choir of priests. The two worthy priests made 40,000 bricks and collected 3.5 wagon-loads of wheat from the parishioners, which they sold in the spring of 1944 to the 64th artillery regiment stationed at Cilieni[2].

As a result of the events of August 1944, much of the money deposited at the National Bank was lost. Nevertheless, the two fathers continued their efforts to build the church, so that in 1947 they procured a lot of materials and signed a contract with the tax collector Ion Berceanu, who undertook to complete the church within 10 years, by 1957.

The new communist leadership of Cilieni did not look favourably on the construction of an Orthodox church. In the spring of 1949, the communist mayor, Constantin Cocolos, took four wagons of corn donated by the faithful for the church and gave them to the state. He also confiscated the wood needed to burn the bricks and took some of it to the school, some to the town hall and a much larger amount to give away free of charge to town hall officials, school teachers and acquaintances.

In this situation, the priest Ioan Mitrică openly spoke out against the communist regime, and to the refugees from Bessarabia who encouraged these robberies, he openly said in church: “You left because of the communists, why do you speak for the communists? “His death was the result of a denunciation to the Security Service authorities by a teacher from Cilieni, who accused him of inciting the masses of peasants in Cilieni to revolt by his hardline stance in defence of church property. The local authorities felt that they would not be able to confiscate all the church property as long as the courageous Father Ioan Mitrică remained free. Informed by his fellow villagers that he was going to be arrested, Father Ioan Mitrică fled his home and went to stay with neighbours behind his garden, where he stayed for a while, then left with the intention of crossing the Ol River to the village of Slobozia-Mândra-Teleorman, where his brother, Father Marin Mitrică, was staying.

But the Security Service knew he was going to Olt river. A neighbour warned him not to go: “Father, don’t go, I’ll get the axe and no one will come in! On the night of 24th to 25th March 1949, on the feast of the Annunciation, the priest Ioan Mitrică was awaited by the Security Service on the banks of the Olt, where there was a floating bridge led by a certain Ștefan Liță. Here the secret police strangled him with a scarf, after torturing him like a saint all night. The bridge operator heard him shouting at them: “What have you got against me, I’ve got my own children to bring up”.

After the murder, he was taken to a house or stable, then the same secretaries threw him in the middle of a field, a few kilometres from the village. About two weeks later, his wife, the presbyter Maria, was informed by a fellow priest that she had seen the dead priest in a field near the railway station in Vișina[4] . Although he had died a long time before, he did not smell and was buried by several priests from the Olt Valley, led by his colleague, Father Mihalache Mitran (1906-2002), who testified that there was a considerable amount of sand on the deceased’s body, from which they concluded that he had been murdered near the Olt, by strangulation, as was also visible on his neck. At the funeral, no one was allowed to talk about the deceased, and the village of Cilieni in the Olt valley was said to have killed its priest and to be cursed. The murderers confessed their sins to the priest Mihalache Mitran, who gave them the last communion. Since then, a candle burns daily at the martyr’s grave[5].

The dream of building a new place of worship was not fulfilled until 2003, when an imposing church was built on the same site and consecrated with the contribution of the entire village of Cilieni.

As the parish priest Mihail Mitran told his daughter, all those who stole the materials needed to build the church met a terrible end.

(Toma Rădulescu – Martyrs for Christ in Romania during the Communist Regime, Publishing House of the Biblical and Missionary Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Bucharest, 2007, pp. 485-487)

1. Church Life in Oltenia, p. 599; Toma Rădulescu, Priest Ioan Mitrică from Cilieni-Romanați (1907-1949), in “Cetatea creștină”, year II, no. 12 (20), December 2003, p. 3.

2. AERm, file 3058, f. unpag.; Idem, file 4190, f. unpag.

3. According to the oral testimony of the faithful Paraschiva Biolan, from Craiova, daughter of the former parish priest Mitran Mihail. from Cilieni.

4. Traian Băjău, Priest loan Mitrică, Cilieni, a martyr of our Holy Church, in “Renașterea”, magazine of the Diocese of Râmnicului, year II, n. 1-2, p. 34-37. It should be noted that in The Imprisoned Church, p. 286, and Orthodox Priests, p. 168, the first name is wrong, instead of John it is “Nicu”.

5.Toma Rădulescu, loc. cit.