Father Nicolae Iordănescu under the communist persecution

On the morning of 15 September 1961, at around 8am, three MIA officers arrived at the house of the priest Nicolae Iordănescu, on Karol Knappe Street in Bucharest. The elderly priest was informed that he was under arrest by the Security Service and that his house was being searched in his and his wife’s presence. Several letters, some writings and two pamphlets were confiscated: Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan’s study on Freemasonry and Professor Teodor M. Popescu’s lecture on “The Vitality of the Orthodox Church”. There was nothing else that could have incriminated the worthy priest of the Church of Saint Mary in Regina Maria Park. It wasn’t the first time his house had been searched. The same thing had happened in January 1959, but to no avail for the dreaded Securitate. Nor had the priest been arrested. But the story of Father Nicolae Iordănescu begins on 6 January 1888, in the family of industrious people from Pătroaia, Dâmbovița county.

After primary school in Târgoviște and Găești, the young Nicolae entered the “Nifon Mitropolit” seminary in Bucharest, graduating in 1910. He married the daughter of the priest Ștefan Dumitrescu from Șuta Seacă and was ordained a priest on 23 August of the same year in the parish of Ciupa-Mănciulești, Argeș county. He is an altar server and a teacher. He is the defender of the peasants, oppressed by the landlords. He helped them to form a community, and in February 1913 he was transferred to the Colanu parish, near Targoviste, where he repaired the church in the village of Ulmi. In the same year he enrolled at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest. During the War of Independence, the priest Nicolae Iordănescu took part as a confessor. After graduating in 1925, the priest moved to a newly established parish in the north-western outskirts of Bucharest. On the edge of the workers’ district, near the Grivița workshops and the CFR depot, it had been decided to establish a parish, but there was no church. So, on 6 June 1928, Pentecost Sunday, in the presence of Patriarch Miron Cristea, Queen Maria and the mayor of the sector, the foundation stone of the Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, later known as “Saint Maria”, was laid in front of an area that was to become the Queen Maria Park. The church was completed by the end of the year and was built at the same time as the nearby school building.

The worthy priest Nicolae wanted to build a whole complex: a place of prayer, a place of education, a social canteen and a bank to help those who did not have significant financial resources. On 16 December 1934, with donations from the faithful, she inaugurated the social canteen, which was to be supported by donations from the faithful.

The joy was complete because the moment was crowned by the consecration of the new place of worship. At the same time, the People’s Bank was in operation until September 1948, when it was taken over by the “1 May” Credit and Consumer Cooperative. The communist regime confiscated everything that reminded it of its “bourgeois past”. The park in front of the church was named ‘Working Romania’. The social canteen was also closed in 1948. But the tradition of charity at St. Mary’s continued. The priest sent parcels to the elderly in his parish. He did the same during the devastating American bombing raids in April 1944.

Times were changing and the mission of the Church was becoming more and more restricted. Father understood the times and tried to adapt to them, so as not to abandon his convictions. He took part in “peace struggle” meetings, but as a priest he continued to visit the faithful he had served for decades. Some of them were dismissed officers whom the regime suspected of “subversive activities”. Four of them were arrested by the Security Service. But the feared institution had been following the priest for years, through close associates and by intercepting his correspondence.

He was arrested in the autumn of 1961. He was suspected of having carried out “intense counter-revolutionary propaganda and agitation against the social and state order in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” between 1956 and 1960. Specifically, he was accused of making “spiteful” comments against the regime after listening to Western radio stations. He did not admit anything during the investigation. On 12 February 1962, he was sentenced by the Bucharest Military Court to three years’ imprisonment for “conspiracy against the social order”. He was sent to Jilava (May 1962) and Botoșani (September 1962). On 30 August 1963, he was released from Botoșani by a pardon decree issued by the MAN.

(Adrian Nicolae Petcu – Ziarul Lumina)

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