Father Teodor Codilă was a great man

After some time, while I was being treated and observed in the hospital in Baia Mare, I don’t know for what reason, I was put in a car and taken back to Baia Sprie without having had the operation I thought I had been sent for.

I continued my work in the mine, doing “suturing”, a dangerous job where, together with other team members, we had to ensure the safety of those underground, checking and removing with steel spears the pieces of rock that were incompletely detached from the ceiling or walls of the galleries and shafts.

Many prisoners were seriously injured, and the Orthodox priest Teodor Codilă from Toboliu, Bihor County, brother of the priest Traian Codilă from the Church with the Moon in Oradea, died when he was crushed by a whale, a slab of rock weighing several tonnes that had broken off the ceiling of the gallery and fallen on him during the work. May God rest the soul of the priest Teodor Codilă, a great man whom we respected and regretted. He taught me only good things, spoke to me about honesty and truth, about faith and love for people.

(Cornel Onaca – Witnesses and Martyrs from the Communist Dungeons, 2nd revised and added edition, Primus Publishing House, Oradea, 2014, p. 148)