Father Ioan Popescu-Băldescu, martyr by force not by choice
Born on 17 July 1886 in Mihăieștii de Sus, Jud. Olt, between 1893-1897 Ion Popescu-Băldescu attended the elementary school in com. Mihăiești, Olt County, then in com. Socetu, Teleorman County. In 1898 he enrolled at the Theological Seminary in Curtea de Argeș, where he studied for two years, and in 1900 he enrolled at the Central Seminary in Bucharest, where he graduated in 1906. Between 1907 and 1914, he attended the Theological Faculty in Bucharest, where he graduated[1].
After the uprising of 1907, Ioan Băldescu was for a time persecuted by the state authorities as an “instigator” among the peasants, in fact as a supporter of their demands. This situation led him to move to the Com. Seaca, Teleorman County, where he would establish a family with eight children[2].
On 15 December 1908 he was ordained priest and assigned to the parish of Seaca, Teleorman County, “a poor village with about 260 households”, as his son, Father Emil Băldescu, testifies. Here, continues his son, “he was taken in by an old widower, without children, who finally left him his house in his will. […] The misery was great. No priest had lasted more than two years. The peasants worked on the estate of a certain Mauriciu Blanck, an estate of about 2175 hectares given to dishonest managers, such as the Mone brothers and a certain Hasan Rudolf. My father, a man sensitive to the suffering of the peasants, took up the fight against the managers and the landlord. They tried to corrupt him in various ways. They did not succeed. Nicolae Iorga and Tache Protopopescu proved to be good allies in his struggle. Especially Iorga, to whom my father provided many subjects worthy of comment in the magazine “Neamul Românesc”, Iorga’s newspaper. As a result of his efforts, the estate was wrested from the hands of the greedy managers and taken over by the Rural House. Then the village also acquired a 675 hectares pasture, which remained the property of the village, as there was no other commune around. […] In the same way, during the post-war expropriation, my father personally took part in the measurement of the land allocated to the peasants, so that not a single person was left unsatisfied. The local people loved him, I could say they adored him. But his superiors appreciated him too. That is why, in July 1919, he was appointed “Protopope of Teleorman County”[3]. Although he was a rural priest, his new position, which he held until 1933, obliged him to direct the pastoral and missionary activity of an area equivalent to the present Teleorman County.
Here, in Seaca, the priest built a new church and a parish house (with 7 rooms). He was instrumental in the construction of two school buildings and a dispensary. He was also involved in the construction of the local town hall and the establishment of the rural bank “Victoria”[4].
Liberal Senator
In 1928, at the request of the Patriarch Miron Cristea, Father Ioan Băldescu moved to Turnu Măgurele, where he became the parish priest of the monumental church of St. Haralambie, a parish of 1050 families and 4800 souls[5]. Here he would again demonstrate his zeal as a good steward of the Lord’s place by restoring the church where he had served between 1935 and 1936, “with the help of the county, the city and the people”[6].
Even when he left Seaca, Father Băldescu kept his “estate” of 5.25 hectares, which he owned and worked with his own hands year after year. In fact, keeping this property would have earned him the label of “landlord” during the years of “popular democracy”, and he was treated as such.
Between 1933 and 1937 he was a senator of the National Liberal Party, Teleorman County branch[7].
From 1932 to 1944 he was an elected member of the Eparchial Assembly of the Archdiocese of Bucharest. As a member of the Eparchial Forum, he proposed effective solutions for the revival of the anti-sectarian activity. Thus, at the meeting of 15 May 1933, he noted the extent of the Adventist presence in the county of Teleorman. He suggested that at least the magazine “Christian Truth”, edited by Father Metodie Popescu, should be distributed more vigorously, using funds from the diocesan funds. He also proposed that the diocesan missionaries, who had greater authority than the local clergy, should intensify their work in the field by preaching as many sermons as possible in order to increase the receptivity of the faithful[8].
Father Băldescu also put forward viable initiatives for the mission of the Church at the meeting of the Eparchial Assembly on 7 May 1934, when he announced that, in his capacity as senator, he had put pressure on the Minister of Finance to pay the salaries of the priests, and proposed that from the rent of church properties, funds should be given to the protopopes or other priests to sell books for the edification of the Orthodox soul, considering at the same time that they were doing more than just pastoral conferences[9].
Arrested on the “Night of the Assumption”.
Once the communist regime was fully established, Father Kentenich was considered a potential “enemy of the people”. Thus, on the evening of 15 August 1952, “the night of the Assumption”, Father Ioan was arrested by the Securitate and his son Emil Băldescu was taken with him. About these moments, but also about the arrest of his father, we have the testimony of Father Emil Băldescu, which we reproduce below: “The lightning was to strike on 15 August 1952, the day of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was towards evening, I think it was 10 or 10.30pm, when I said goodbye to him. […] As soon as I got home, my father was arrested. I was arrested the same night. […] We were no exception. Because that same night there were massive arrests all over the country. For example, the priest Metodie Popescu, who was assisting my father at the Cathedral of St. Haralambie in Turnu Măgurele, was at the Olănești resort at the time. And he was arrested at the same time. At night, loaded into two trucks full of the best of Turnu Măgurele’s spirituality, under the guard of the secret police, we arrived at the Ghencea camp at dawn. [Looking at the handcuffs on my hands and the chains on my legs and those of my companions, I realised that it was not our dangerousness that made the secret police put us in chains, but their pleasure in humiliating us. That was the beginning. The series of humiliations would continue and, for many of us, end in death.
In Ghencea our chains were removed. We were crammed into huts, huddled together. I was with my father, I couldn’t get away from him. We were both in chains, not knowing what awaited us, and our main concern was for those left at home. My mother was left alone, without any help, because my father’s pension had been cut off a few months before. So was my wife, a housewife with two small children to look after. I was her only support. I thought that if they were evicted from the parish house, as was expected and happened, they would have nowhere to go. I didn’t tell my father, and he didn’t tell me, but it was written in our eyes. Our only consolation was that we were still together. That’s what I asked in my secret prayers to the good Lord: that we would never be separated on our way through this ordeal that was just beginning. And God heard my prayer.
At the beginning of September, my father fell ill. He had been suffering from a heart condition for some time, but it had got worse. He was breathing harder and harder. I took him to the camp infirmary. The doctor there was kind enough to admit him, but there was no medicine. He was there for about 10 days. But he didn’t come out any better. He had just turned 66, and I never imagined that his life had begun to wither away.
On 18 September we were all taken out of the barracks and brought to the assembly area. A committee had come to triage us. They said that those who were fit to work should be taken to the canal. And so it was. But they didn’t just take the able-bodied. Like my father.
The second day, 19 September, the group destined for the canal route, about 400 people, were put in lorries and driven on a back platform in from the Bucharest-triage railway station . There we were loaded into several railway carriages. I held my father in my arms and tried to get him close to a small window where there was still some air circulating. But there was no more room. Between our legs was the priest of Alexandria, Father Serculescu, who was also ill. We stood on one leg so as not to crush him.
The third day, 20 September, at dawn, we felt the howling of the Cernavodă bridge below us. We were crossing into Dobrogea. And suddenly, I don’t know who among us made the assumption that they were not takins us to the canal, but that they wanted to throw us into the sea. A logical assumption, as there were too many sick people among us.
But the train stopped at Dorobanți station. We were taken off and rounded up. Between the armed guards we crossed the city towards the Gale; Coast, a colony in formation. As our pitiful convoy passed, the locals, standing at a distance, looked at us in amazement. I saw many of them wiping away tears.
When we reached the top of the plateau between the huts, we were told to sit down. The ground was damp and a strong wind was blowing. The commander came and called the roll. Then he said, “You have been brought here to do 60 months’ work. It was our sentence, which has just been communicated to us.
The next day, a Sunday, we began our work around the colony; finishing the construction of the barracks, putting up the fences, digging the holes for the cupboards, etc. It was our respite, our “acclimatisation”, so to speak, with our new prison. That’s how we found out that the water was brought all the way from Constanța, in barrels, and only for the kitchen. They soon told us why: it was also used for cooking in the secret police canteen. We were not allowed to use even a drop of this water for washing.
He died pushing the wheelbarrow
My problem was that I was separated from my father. He was in one brigade and I was in another. In the evening of Tuesday 23 September I found out where my father was. With great difficulty I sneaked into his barracks. It was the last time we spoke. The poor man tried to console me. He told me that he was very happy that I, one of his children, had put on a priest’s cassock. And he made me promise never to betray my mission.
The next day came, Wednesday 24th of September. Father’s brigade was working the first shift. Mine was the second shift. On the way, at a distance from each other, our columns of the doomed crossed each other’s paths. The column returning from the construction site was carrying a dead body. At that distance I didn’t realise it was my father. I was to find out later that it was my father, carried on the shoulders of the priests Leonida Dumitrăchescu and Ioan Turcu, with the help of others. Dead, they took him to the colony to be present at the roll call.
When I returned from work at night, around midnight, I was told that my father had died. I was told he was in the infirmary. As it was night, it was impossible to get out of the barracks. It’s hard to describe the night I spent there. When daylight came and the alarm went off, I ran to the infirmary. The orders were that no one was to see him again, but I met a humane guard. His name was Tocaliuc, a Bukovinian, and he allowed me to see him. He was thrown into an unused toilet cubicle intended for the infirmary. I found him lying there in his priest’s garb, the clothes he had been arrested in and had never taken off. Then I found out how he died: pushing a heavy metal wheelbarrow up a high railway embankment. His heart couldn’t take it. He fell as if struck by lighting near a man called Roman from Ploiești. A doctor, Teodorescu, from Bucharest, a prisoner of the same brigade, was quickly called and pronounced him dead”[10].
(Adrian Nicolae Petcu – Rost Magazine no. 45 of November 2006, pp. 44-47 apud Martyrs for Christ in Romania during the communist regime, E.I.B.M.B.O.R., 2007, pp. 80-84)
[1] Testimony of the priest Emil Băldescu, son of Father Ioan Băldescu.
[2] Vasile Manea, Orthodox Priests in Communist Prisons, 2nd edition, Patmos, 2001, p. 41.
[3] Yearbook of the Archdiocese of Bucharest 1941, p. 428; Emil Băldescu, Noi, famiglia de preoți Băldescu…, in “Memoria”, n. 9, p. 19.
[4] Testimony of the priest Emil Băldescu, son of Father Ioan Băldescu; Emil Băldescu, Noi, famiglia…, p. 20.
[5] Orthodox priests…, p. 41; Calendar of the Archdiocese of Bucharest – 1939, p. 210.
[6] “Apostol”, year XIV, n. 1-2, 1 January 1937, p. 36.
[7] Testimony of the priest Emil Băldescu, son of Father Ioan Băldescu; Orthodox Priests, p. 41.
[8] Calendar of the Archdiocese of Bucharest – 1940, p. 56; “Apostolul”, year X, nos. 15-16, 1-15 August 1933, p. 227.
[9] Ibidem, year XI, nos. 13-14, 1-15 July 1934, pp. 256, 260.
[10] ACNSAS, documentary collection, file 73, vol. 1, p. 102; Mărturisitori de după gratii in prison in communist prisons, supplement to the magazine “Renașterea”, Cluj Napoca, 1995, p. 12; Emil Băldescu, Noi, familia de preoți Băldescu…, in “Memoria”, no. 9, pp. 20-22; Ion, Bălan, Lista persoanelor decedate în gulagul românesc 1945-1964 (III), in “Arhivele Totalitarismului”, vol. V (1997), no. 2-3 (15-16), p. 224.