“Father John Stephen Boboc was a saint undaunted by all the vicissitudes he went through”
In 1943 I spent my Easter holidays in Cislău, Buzău County. One day a young priest came into the courtyard of the post office where I lived. As a student in the first year of the Buzău Theological Seminary, I was naturally attracted by the person of a priest. When I asked, I found out that the one who had passed by was Fr. Ioan Șt. Boboc from the parish of Bărăști – Scărișoara. In a few minutes I felt that I had seen a servant of the Lord who seemed different from the others. Although I was still a child, I had had the opportunity to meet so many priests in the institution and in the city where I had begun my theological studies. But none of them had captivated me at first sight…
He enchanted people with a gaze that seemed to be truly and prematurely directed towards the Kingdom beyond this age. One could feel from the first moments that he did not follow the usual earthly rules. He dominated his parishioners with silence and with that dignity that comes from the active presence of love and faith in God. For this reason many obeyed him from the beginning, and in the end even more followed him. The spiritual thoughts of this priest and the Christian projects he preached pleased his listeners, but he did not mobilise them easily. They proved to be too high for their spiritual means. For this reason, he was loved by some and sometimes disregarded by others. Perhaps the latter also despised him with that feeling which opposes and precedes their conversion. It was the “hatred” of the disparity between the apostle’s fervor and the lukewarm soul with which he was to be confronted, according to the admonition of the Apocalypse…
The zealous shepherd had to endure innumerable annoyances from the “lukewarm” around him, disturbed in their ruinous routine. They were embarrassed not only because the priest of Scărișoara was a “mystic” (a great pity even in those days!), but also because he did not accept payment for his services. The man who retreated every week to the forest for penance, prayer and contemplation, following the parable of the Holy Fathers, recommended to others the “alms-house” in the church, but he was the first to practise it. And he did that sincerely…
With such a rigorous spiritual programme for the personal perfection of the priest and, through him, of the parish, Father John could not help but be accused of being “too talkative”, “exaggerated”, “out of place”. In the case of the hooligans who prepared an endless Golgotha for him, a platonic sympathy for a nationalist political current served as an unforgivable pretext. They did not dare to attack him directly for his morals and sincere expressions of charity for any human being. But they did it from behind, through the hypocrites, condemned in every age to lick the chains at their feet. The path of insinuation and harassment is endless.
It is true that he was not in sympathy with the Church authorities either. The strict evangelical activity of Father John’s life would have been incomplete if it had been refrained only to this extent. And then he, the serene man of creative localism, was exiled; he, the most peaceful apostle, was considered undesirable and persecuted…
According to his parishioners in so many places, Fr. Cleopa Ilie, Prof. Dr. Constantin Galeriu, Prof. Ioan Buga, Pr. Constantin Sburlan, his successor in the parish of Călțuna, he remained “a great man”, “pure in heart”, appreciated and regretted by many pastors. According to our humble sentiments, then and now, Pr. Ioan Șt. Boboc was a saint, undaunted by all the vicissitudes through which he passed.
He comes from the Orthodox priesthood of laity, the correspondent of Saint John Jacob the Chozebite, among the monks.
(Fr. Gheorghe I. Drăgulin – Victims of the Communist Prisons and of the Revolution in the Attention of the Contemporary Hagiographer, in “Biserica Ortodoxă Română”, No. 7-9, 1991, Bucharest, p. 96)