Father Sinesie Ioja – the heart’s supplicant

In Târgu Ocna I met Father Ioja Sinesie. He was a priest from Banat who had no special education or culture to impress you, but he was of great faith and had a permanent spirit of prayer. He was very quick to understand the signs that occur during the practice of the prayer of the heart, with the warmth, the pain that you feel and the flame that comes out and other things that I didn’t know at that time and then read about in Sbornik. Signs that from Târgu Ocna, Gafencu, Father Iscu, Father Sinesie Ioja and Gheorghe Jimboiu spoke of and that they did not know from books, but from their constant prayer.

Father Sinesie, as a priest, received the confession of many there. He too died later, in another prison.

(Pr. Mihai Lungeanu – Saint of Prisons, by monk Moise Iorgovan, Reîntregirea Publishing House, Alba Iulia, 2007, p. 162)