Fr. Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa (en)

“After being released he gave his life, soul and work to God with a force that frightens and shakes us”

Gheorghe was an intelligent young man with an extraordinary memory. In re-education, after the “revolutionary shock” and the call to become an activist, everyone was looking for the most acceptable compromise. Gheorghe couldn’t become a murderer or an informer. He was too intelligent and believed in God to accept “restructuring”, but he had to play the role of “restructured”. Țurcanu found in his memory a kind of mechanical brain that he needed in the immense shorthand and clichés of re-education. So he kept it with him and used it as a “memory” of what was going on in re-education. It […]

Gheorghe Calciu’s sublime sacrifice to save Costache Oprișan

COSTACHE OPRIȘAN, the sick man in cell 4 – put there specifically to contaminate the others with Koch’s bacillus from his cavernous lungs – was growing weaker. His cough was choking him, and blood was pooling in his throat and mouth. He wiped himself as best he could with some sort of cloth, but little droplets still dripped from his mouth and fell down his chest from his beard, which was covered with more clots. The other three looked at him helplessly. What could they do to him? Calcius had had the idea, and the kindness, to wash his bottle […]

Physician Gheorghe Calciu in Gherla Prison

I can’t close the door to the bedroom of those in charge – there were not only those from the technical office, but also the heads of the workshops in the factory – without talking about a friend I made there – Ghiță Calciu – the future Father Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa. He didn’t work in the technical office and often Mihalcea [commander of the production unit in the Gherla prison workshops, n.n.] would bump into him and punish him, without me understanding at the time the reason for the grudge. Later I suspected that the political officer’s informers passed through Calciu, […]

The humiliations endured by Fr. Gheorghe Calciu in order to save Marcel Petrișor

Mircea fell ill with dysentery or intestinal tuberculosis. His blood gushed from his buttocks like an enema. One day, two, three, four, five, until “on the sixth day he fell asleep on his bed, looking even more exhausted than Oprișan had been. Even the guards didn’t tell him to get up any more, waiting for him to “give in”. And perhaps, at the thought that with his death, the number of victims who had to disappear to leave only nine alive would be fulfilled, an intimate glimmer of very hidden hope stirred in the minds of Joseph and Calciu. Just […]

“My meeting with Fr. Gheorghe Calciu”

Nothing in this world, seen or unseen, is accidental; everything that is and will be, happens only with the knowledge, permission and will of God. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” says the word of the Holy Scripture. All the evil that we humans suffer is only because of our abuse of freedom, which leads to unbelief, disobedience and the transgressions we commit. I had never met Fr. Gheorghe Calciu in person. I had seen him a few times in Pitești, when we went out with the tents, in the section below us. The people […]

Recovery from the traumas of “re-education” – repentance and grace

Interview with Father Gheorghe Calciu: – What were the stages of your return, how did you reconnect with God? – My return was not sudden. My recovery was much harder than others, because my fall was greater. I was a rather naive young man, a farmer’s child with a strong faith, with a great trust in people. I was very likeable. Even after my fall they used to call me “the fallen angel with blue eyes” because everyone thought I was an angel. Now I was a fallen angel. And my suffering was so great and my brokenness so total […]

From the hell of Pitești to the American exile – The Golgotha of an apostle

I have written in the pages of this book that I have known exceptional people, true martyrs of the Romanian nation or of an angelic nobility, around whom I have felt how the grace of God that descended upon them was also reflected in the nature of those around them. During the communist persecution, the presence of such people in the prisons of Romania concentrated thousands of spiritual values, as I said before, the whole cream of the Romanian nation. Some were killed by Machiavellian methods, others resisted without putting any price on their own lives, except perhaps that of […]

“Legionnaire” Gheorghe Calciu in C.N.S.A.S. documents NETER

With levity, with contempt or, more rarely, with assumption, it is said of Father Calciu that he was a legionnaire. This study is part of a larger research on the life of Father Gheorghe Calciu, who was also accused of being a legionnaire. Father Gheorghe Calciu was sentenced three times: in 1949, 1957 and 1979. Of these three convictions, the first two are related to legionnaireism, but only in the case of the first can his legionnaire activity be discussed, since the second conviction was the result of the events in Pitești prison, and the authorities’ version that the legionnaire […]

Sentence of defrocking No. 9 of 6 October 1984

“I am a child of farmers from the Delta. There were eleven of us, and I was the youngest. Life in the Delta, in Mahmudia, was very beautiful. It was a paradise! We had farmland, we had puddles with all their beauty, we had boats, fishing equipment. There were birds in the delta! There was an extraordinary brotherhood with the animals, we understood their life as something integrated into our life…”[1]. His mother was his first theology teacher. At that time there were Romanian Orthodox, but also Russians and Turks living in the village, each with their own religion and […]

Appeal against the sentence of defrocking No. 9 of 6 October 1984

I, the undersigned priest, Professor Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa, who was catechised by decree No. 9 of 6 October 1984 of the Eparchial Consistory of the Holy Archdiocese of Bucharest, appeal against the above-mentioned decree and contest it for the following reasons: 1. I did not demolish churches, sacred places of worship, monuments of the Romanian creative genius. I defended them and paid for this courage with suffering. 2. I did not consider the church as a “puppet theatre”, but as a sacred place, the only place and the only possibility of human salvation. 3. I have not beaten and threatened […]

Reference No. 10.160/1984 for the reopening of the appeal against the defrocking

REFERENCE Basis No. 10.160/1984 The Canonical, Juridical and Disciplinary Commission has received an appeal from the former priest Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa against sentence no. 9/1984, issued by the Eparchial Consistory of the Archdiocese of Bucharest, by which the punishment “Caterisirii” was imposed on him, in accordance with the provisions of art. 4 paragraph B, lit. “d” of the Code of Canon Law. From the analysis of the documents in the case file, it can be seen that the former priest Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa was guilty of serious misconduct and offences such as: – Total disobedience and defiance of the higher […]

Fr. Gheorghe Calciu – “warm and kind soul, with a great vibration of pain at the suffering of others”

Among the students who went to Pitești for the famous re-education, the only one I stayed with was Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa; we stayed for two or three weeks, just the two of us. Short, dark-haired, bright-eyed, well dressed, I liked him enough, especially for the news he told me. He was intelligent and had one of the best memories I’ve discovered in prisoners. He had an overview of things without neglecting the details. I don’t remember discussing at length with him what had happened in Pitești because of the “fire”, which he had also experienced, but only in passing. But […]

An abysmal experience – dialogue with priest Gheorghe Calciu Dumitreasa and writer Marcel Petrișor

Father Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa (b. 1927), political prisoner for 21 years in communist prisons. Published: “Seven Words for Young People” (Anastasia, 1996), “Prayer and Mystical Light. Essays and religious meditations” (Dacia, 1998), “War in the Word” (Nemira, 2001), “Homo americanus”. His Christian message, addressed mainly to young people, is inseparable from that of the nation, in the purest spirit of the Orthodox tradition. Father Calciu serves at the Romanian Orthodox Church of the Holy Cross of Alexandria, Washington D.C. Marcel Petrișor (b. 13 April 1930), political prisoner from 1951 to 1964, with a few months’ interruption in 1956. After his release, […]

Priest Gheorghe Calciu – “A symbol of holiness”

In the narrow circle of the communist political elite in the middle of the century, there were two currents: Ana Pauker wanted to use violence to eliminate opponents, and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej wanted to use labour. The dungeons, camps and ‘re-education’ of the 1950s were the expression of Ana Pauker’s policy of hatred and murder. When she ordered the Marxist-Leninist ‘re-education’ of the political prisoners in the Pitești prison, she did not believe in her ideal formulation, but cruelly wanted to exterminate the ‘class enemies’ by force. She did not believe in the ideal definition of class enemies either, but in […]

Fr. Gheorghe Calciu – “he was beaten to a pulp” until he was re-educated

As for Fr. Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa, I know that he ended up in Țurcanu’s noose at the same time as I did. But in another room. There he was beaten to a pulp and subjected to other tortures until his mind was turned around and he formed the conditioned reflexes desired by the Security Service. They turned Dumitreasa into a superior robot, for he was intelligent and beyond clever from birth. The last students left Pitești and ended up in Gherla prison. Some of us were sent to work in the workshops. Another part, just as numerous, was distributed among the […]

Student Gheorghe Calciu – From intransigence to re-education, and from re-education to holiness

Another, more complicated case: medical student Gheorghe Calciu. It depends on when you met him: before his re-education, after his own re-education, or after the whole operation was over. Before Pitești, Calciu was one of the most intransigent; after re-education, one of the most hardened torturers[1]; after the experience, when the scapegoat trial was being prepared, he was the old man again, brave and loyal. Calciu could not be tried in Țurcanu’s batch because he announced that he would not answer any questions until the real initiator of the experiment, General Nikolski, was brought to the trial as a witness. […]