“Go and meet Father Iovan”

“Go and see Father Iovan,” Professor Nicolae Balotă urged me. “You really have to talk to him. At the end of a road that you have travelled for twenty-five years, talking to him will open your eyes to many things”.

I arrived at Recea Monastery one day in September, accompanied by my children – George (almost seven years old), Mihnea (almost five years old) and my wife, Ruxandra Manuela. Right from the start we were impressed by the complex of specifically Romanian architecture built near Târgu Mureș by skilful and hard-working people, led by Mother Abbess Stavrofora Cristina. Entering the holy enclosure, we immediately felt a sense of excitement and spiritual uplift. Only the passing cars on the road and the roar of planes from the nearby airport reminded us of the emblems of the world from which we came. And the meeting with Father Iovan, which took place at night after he had finished his daily duties, will remain for me as a touch from another realm. We talked at length about suffering and the strength to endure it without losing hope, about the wickedness of man and his greatness, about what can keep one upright in life, about redemption through faith, about what threatens man and his ways of salvation. We also talked about generosity and forgiveness.

At the end of the conversation, the Father Confessor of Recea Monastery handed me a few pages of heartbreaking confessions about what he had been given to suffer. “You have my blessing to use them as you see fit.”

– Where were you born?

– I am of Bihorean origin, born on 26 June 1922 to parents: priest Gavril and presbyter Maria. I attended primary school in my native village and secondary school at the “Emanoil Gojdu” high school in Oradea, the last two grades under Hungarian occupation, at the “St. Ladislaus” high school, Romanian section, with Hungarian teachers. Then I studied theology in Cluj for three years, in parallel with law. After graduating in theology in Sibiu, I attended the University Pedagogical Seminary, Orthodox Religion, for two years, and after graduating I was assigned to teach at the “Gheorghe Barițiu” High School in Cluj. In 1947, I was admitted to doctoral studies in Bucharest, and for two years I studied under the direction of Father Stăniloaie, defending several theses. After getting acquainted with monastic life at Sâmbăta Monastery, I gave up teaching in 1947 and went to Vladimirești Monastery near Tecuci.

– That year I was also in Tecuci, I had just seen the light of day…

– On 26 May 1948 I was ordained a deacon by Fr. Nicolae Popovici – a martyred bishop – on 27 November 1949 I was ordained a monk, taking the name of John, and in December 1949 I was ordained a hieromonk in Vladimirești Monastery. Here I served until 1955, when, on the basis of a memorandum submitted to the state and the leadership of the Orthodox Church, my catechisation was illegally ordered. The “comrades” were disturbed by the Vladimirești monastery, they wanted to abolish it. I was against it. The communists were afraid of the miracles that, with God’s help, were happening in that monastery. At the feast of the Assumption of the Mother of God, the last one in 1954, with all the communist terror, more than thirty thousand faithful were present. Gheorghe Apostol, originally from the village of Vladimirești, also fought for the abolition of the monastery at all costs. Probably on the orders of the Russians. His father, a good Christian, said to him: “I made you, I will kill you if you dare to touch the monastery”.

– How were you arrested?

– I was accused of incitement to terrorism on a false charge, arrested on the orders of the Securitate, sentenced to life imprisonment by the Galati Tribunal and sent to the Semicerc prison in the same city, in a cell without glass or heating. That’s where I spent the Easter holidays.

– Of course there was an investigation.

– Weakened by the rigours of the investigation – the Internal Affairs people were overzealous – I was determined to see to the salvation of my soul, aware that my life was getting shorter by the day.

The clanging of metal doors had become torture. When I asked to leave, I was told: “Wait”; for days I was told “Wait”. They had a diabolical system of destroying you morally and physically, grinding your nerves and your body. At one point I got glandular TB. At the same time, my hands were cracked to the bone from the dirt and cold. Nevertheless, I made a superhuman effort to pray in the prayer position every time. Not a day went by that I didn’t hold the Liturgy. With the help of the planters (common law prisoners) I was given a bottle of tonic wine as medicine. I had the antimension sewn on the back of my shirt. The chalice was a medicine chest made of consecrated ebonite. One night, on the 7th of February, I had a distressing dream. I dreamt of my dead mother in the parish house where I was born. She was surrounded by flowers, and when I stepped forward to kiss her hand, I found my feet on the cold cement of the cell. The dream disturbed me because I don’t usually remember dreams. At 10 o’clock the window opened and a Securitate officer in charge of me said: “Iovan Silviu, pack your bags!

– Why?

– They put me in cell number 26 on the first floor, with heat and glass. I looked like a hunted dog that had escaped from a cave. That same week, Dr. Shoferman from the prison hospital came and, seeing the state I was in, asked the doctor and the health officer of Galati prison: “Did you give him any care? The answer was: “No!” “Then why didn’t you shoot him? Take him in the next van to Văcărești”. When the first van arrived, it said: “Cinema Caravan”, they put chains on my legs and handcuffs on my hands, and I was taken to the station lying on the floor. There I heard them telling people that they had to load potatoes into the wagons. In Văcărești I was met by Doctor Shoferman and Doctor Blidaru, the son of a priest. They looked after me and cured me. When the Russians were reconciled with the Americans, I had the right to write home, to call someone to talk to.

– Who did you call?

– I called my mother. On 28 August, when the speaker was due, I waited anxiously for her. I was surprised when my father arrived. Without saying “kiss my hand”, I asked him why my mother hadn’t come. He replied that she will come next time. I shouted, “Why are you telling me this? My mother would come even if she was sick on a stretcher. What happened on the 7th of February?” My father was surprised and started to cry. “Who told you?” “I dreamt on the 7th of February that she was dead. I think she reached out her hand to the Mother of God and asked her to take care of her baby,” I said with tears in my eyes. My poor father fell crumpled on the wire fence and whispered to me, “I broke my mourning, had a glass of wine to take courage, but I see you know”.

– The dream!

– Also in Văcărești, before I was transferred to Jilava, where it was a transit prison, I experienced a moment of exaltation. At Easter, with great difficulty, I managed to persuade the Roman Catholic parish priest of Iași, Xaveriu, who had died in prison, and the Greek Catholic Father Nicolae Opriș, former parish priest of Bonțida-Cluj, to celebrate Liturgy together, since we were prisoners of all confessions. Holy objects were used, according to what was possible in the harsh conditions of the prison. Everything went well until the moment of consecration, i.e. the epiclesis (the call of the Holy Spirit to prepare the gifts), when the romano-catholic priest hesitated to consecrate. I urged him to consider that we were at a crossroads in our lives, to go beyond confessionalism, and he finally received the sacraments.

For me it was a moment of sublime happiness, I even told them that there, closed within the walls, we had succeeded in bringing about the union of the three confessions. This was followed by the communion of all the prisoners in an atmosphere of Christian ecstasy.

– What followed?

– From Văcărești I was transferred to Jilava prison, a transit prison, where, as in all prisons with prisoners sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, a diabolical, perverse attempt is made to corrupt you morally, to force you to deny your convictions, to betray you, to admit that they are the ones who are right. They took me to a cell next to the mortuary where death row inmates were held, those awaiting their end. There I experienced moments of horror. I had the impression of being trapped in a tomb. The ventilation was in a third room and the humidity was so high that I never managed to dry my towel or handkerchief. Maybe that’s why they call it Jilava, because of the pain I felt in my bones.

– It was the most appropriate name.

– I was shocked and deeply impressed that next to me a condemned man (political prisoner) was trying to escape. In desperation, he dug with his hands in the cell and the earth, that later carried with him, hidden under his clothes, outside to the tin can. The poor man thought no one could see him, but the guard knew all about it and let him go on, until one day another political prisoner told him in Morse code to stop struggling because he had been discovered and they were having fun at his expense. They soon executed him by firing squad in Peach Valley.

– Did anything unusual happen to you there?

– There, in Jilava, I experienced the most intense feeling of being a priest. One day I was taken to the smithy to be transferred to Gherla. They laid me on the floor, on my back, worse than an animal, and, as common prisoners, convicted of murder, rape, robbery, they threw us chains to pick us up. I confess that the moment I put my hand on the chain, I shunned the common law prisoners, worshiped it and kissed it, thinking of St. Paul the Apostle, and considered it a test of faith in God. I admit that I did not make a good choice of chain. Instead of a thicker and longer one, I chose a shorter and lighter one, which did not allow me to move freely. They grabbed me and put my foot on the anvil to secure my rivets, and when they struck they didn’t care that the metal bit into the living flesh of my legs; the marks are still visible today. They lifted me up and put handcuffs on my hands, they called them “American handcuffs”, they had the peculiarity of tightening automatically the moment you moved your hand, causing terrible pain.

– How did you manage?

– Equipped with leg chains and handcuffs, I walked back from the blacksmith’s shop to my cell, humiliated and cursed: “Move, you bandit! Halfway between the smithy and the cell, worried about not losing my balance because of the shortness of the chain and the pain, especially as my legs were bleeding, I was unaware that someone was coming from behind, and suddenly I felt a boot kick in my lumbar region, a blow delivered with thirst and full force, accompanied by a nasty curse about my mom. I was off balance, but I didn’t fall. Then I felt the miracle in that I straightened up and while I was in a state of swaying, I exclaimed: “May the Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ forgive you, spiritual son by name, and blot out all your sins, including this one, and I, the unworthy priest confessor, with the power given to me, forgive you and absolve you of all your sins in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. At that moment I really knew that I was a Christian and a priest, and I made the defrocking with all my heart. The one who had hit me was immediately silent and stepped aside, frightened by my gesture. My cellmates urged me to report him because he had no right to hit a wounded man, a man in chains and handcuffs. I didn’t accept. I told them I couldn’t forgive and complain at the same time. The perpetrator was a guard I didn’t know and I didn’t care who he was.

– Did you stay in Jilava?

– From Jilava, after they had put chains on my legs and handcuffs on my hands, without telling us the route and destination, I was put in a van and taken, along with other political prisoners sentenced to long terms, to Gherla Prison, a 365-room prison built by Maria Tereza. As we got off the van, we were greeted with the usual boos and jeers: “Why didn’t you do your job, you bandit, so you wouldn’t end up here?”

– Did you experience anything more important in Gherla?

– It was during my time in Gherla that the events of 1956 took place in Hungary. We were all surprised that the officers among the political prisoners were taken away from us and put in separate cells; later we found out that they were fed very well, while we were starving as usual. At some point, through the new arrivals and through the “pipe” (Morse system), we received the news that there had been a massacre in Hungary. The next day we were taken out and forced to lie on our stomachs with our mouths pressed against the cement. An unimaginably diabolical scene followed. Commandant Goiciu and all his subordinates, including the doctor and the sanitary staff, began to beat us, kicking us with their boots wherever they could. They hit us with everything they could get their hands on, with indescribable cruelty, they looked like madmen. There was a terrible din, kicking, screaming, muffled groans, bestial curses. The only words I can remember are these: “Hey, you bandits, try what your colleagues did in Hungary, we’ll run over your bodies with tanks, not boots!”

It was ironic, the height of hypocrisy, when in the afternoon the doctor and the medics came to bandage our wounds.

– They were diabolical!

– Shortly afterwards another tragedy occurred, again with the idea of repression, or rather to prevent any possible protest on our part. They counted us, and every fifth prisoner, whoever the misfortune was, was taken out and taken to the warden’s room, where he was placed on a chair and beaten with a wet sheet. Then, in the presence of the doctor, fifty blows were administered with a crowbar. I cannot understand how they could invent such systems of torture. We watched helplessly and frightened in our cells, and in order to distract us from the screams of our colleagues, the management ordered us to be fed, even though it was not meal time.

The airman Dumitru Cucu, who was considered to be unruly, was taken out of our room and given seventy strokes. When they took him to the cell, he was black and I thought it was impossible for him to get out alive. But God helped him: to my joy, in November 1991, he visited me in the bishopric of Alba Iulia and left me a letter saying that he was alive and that he was a university professor in Canada.

– What followed?

– After the events in Hungary, a group of political prisoners with long sentences, sentenced to 20-25 years of daily labour, were transferred to Aiud Prison. Here we were concentrated in small rooms with bunk beds and no air, so much so that we had to force the air vents open in order to breathe. We soon became ill, dysentery was rampant. We received no welfare and no medicine. Because of the stench of the stinking toilet and the lack of ventilation, we struggled, powerless, with our tongues hanging out, barely able to fan with our sheets. When the doctor and the political officer made their rounds, they stopped at the door, struck by the smell and the stuffy air. “These are murderers, let’s get on with it,” they said to each other in disgust, paying no attention to us.

Of course, for some this ordeal seems unbelievable. Sometimes I feel like shouting: ‘My God, it’s a divine miracle that I’m still alive!

The management wanted to exterminate us, every day they took the dead out of us. What shocked me the most was the lack of humanity of the guards, who were beasts. When they opened the door to take out the dead, they shouted with a grin: “Only two died here?” At great risk, colleagues dug through the shutters to see the dead being carried into the courtyard… “Now they’re taking ours,” they whispered at one point, and an eerie, deathly silence fell over the cell. I carry beyond the grave the memory of a fellow Dobrogean, a Macedonian from Baia. After I had given him Communion, after I had said the prayer “What in all time and at all hours…”, “He took my hands, kissed them and whispered to me in a dying voice: “Please, Father, tell home that I died a Christian death, like a good Romanian who did not betray his conscience”. When they opened the door, he gave up his soul. There were also cases where people were taken out who were barely breathing, who were about to give up their souls, some were hit on the head with a boot.

And again, my mother’s soul saved me from death.

– How did it happen?

– I got dysentery and was always in terrible pain. It was a hellish atmosphere, a constant feeling of suffocation, and the terrible news of the death of colleagues. Nevertheless, one day I did not interrupt Holy Liturgy. I was aware that one day I would die. But the desire to partake my suffering colleagues, to be with them spiritually and gracefully, gave me a certain strength. There was a real spirit of collegiality and devotion among us, we were all experiencing the same agony, the same suffering. After I had finished the Liturgy with great difficulty, during the consecration, when my colleagues began to sing “Truly Come”, the Axion, I fell, I collapsed on the floor. My colleagues washed me with the little water they had left, and when I woke up I said to them, “Come quickly to receive Communion, because I don’t know if I’m going to live”. With God’s help I was able to give them Communion and, exhausted, I asked to be allowed to lie down on a bed in the dead corner of the cell. I fell asleep immediately and had a dream like a vision. I found myself in an open-air amphitheatre with my entire choir, dressed in monastic garb. At one point a voice announced that we were about to see an exemplary Mother Priestess. I looked towards the stage and saw my mother. After a few steps, the Mother of God appeared above her with the Christ Child in her arms. The Child and the Mother looked at us with such brightness in their eyes that my eyes remained fixed on my mother. She walked slowly towards the souffleour stand. She was a modest country priestess, and I had the impression that she was asking herself: “What am I doing here? She looked at me sadly in the midst of the choir, and we did not stop adoring the Child Jesus in His Mother’s arms. My mother did not turn away from us, but withdrew to the back of the stage. The Saviour and His Mother were always radiating grace to us in the amphitheatre. When my mother reached the backstage area, I woke up and jumped out of bed shouting: “Where is Our Lady and the Christ Child? My colleagues thought I was delirious. I told them about the dream and to my great joy and that of my colleagues I found that I had woken up completely cured. Where I had expected to be taken out on a stretcher, I woke up healthy, saved again by my mother’s soul.

– How were the days in prison?

– One day, while I was saying my prayers (canon) in front of the cross I had marked on the wall with water, the doors opened and the investigator and a general came in, accompanied by the guard. I, who thought the general was a military prosecutor, was not disturbed at his entrance. “What were you doing by the wall?” the general asked me. “I was praying…” “You’re being silly! Why did you brainwashed people in the monastery to come here?” – he continued contemptuously. “I would like to brainwash you too, General, with the noble intention of bringing you closer to God, as I did with the faithful in the monastery,” I replied in the same tone.

“You will never brainwash me, except the fools and the peasants who still believe in your miracles! “You should know, General, that people from generals to shepherds come to our monastery to worship. How nice of you to take the peasants and prostitutes for granted, now you’re slandering them”. “Look at him, how impertinent he is to answer the question!” he said to his companions, indignant. The questioner drew back a step and waved his hand desperately to silence me. The guard rushed over and closed the window so the inmates in the other cells wouldn’t hear. After the general had left the cell, the interrogator came back and said to me: “You have ruined everything, the whole investigation has been turned upside down, and your attitude will have serious consequences, because the Minister of the Interior himself, Comrade Alexandru Drăghici, was a part of the inspection.” “Let him be healthy and not to insult my faith, I am ready to give my life for my faith” – I said calmly.

– They were transferred again.

– When we were transferred to Bacău Securitate, we gathered together a number of political prisoners to be sent to prisons around the country. There, to my horror, I heard from a prisoner undergoing re-education in Pitești about unbelievably bad treatment. He told us that they were asked to deny their belief in God, otherwise they were forced to eat the excrement from their own mesh tin (excuse the expression). They were made to sit for hours in an agonising position, bent over with their hands on their toes, and if they moved they were beaten on the back with a crowbar. Often they were helpless witnesses of the Saviour’s bestial desecration, as one of them was made to sit down like a goat, and another saddled him, saying: “Now the Saviour is entering Jerusalem on a donkey.” The parenthesis of these wicked deeds is far too great to end here. Later, in freedom, I realised that this cursed re-education had so many facets, each one more cunning, that its author (the Devil) is rightly called “the wisest in wickedness”.

One of the hypocritical faces of re-education was the method used in Aiud. A large number of prisoners – Orthodox and Catholics – easily fell victim to it, with the promise that they would be released sooner, and those who consented indulged in a rude “mea culpa” show, admitting how much they had done wrong by opposing the Communist regime, which they now glorified, and solemnly claiming that they would never work against it, considering it a true happiness. As we were reluctant to participate, they resorted to the use of force, putting us in loudspeaker cells and forcing us to listen to what we were tired of hearing.

– As far as I understand, you made no compromises.

– When I refused to read from the funny Bible to my colleagues, and Commander Christmas tried to explain to me that even Peter gave up his hands and feet to save himself from drowning, thus offering me a way out, I replied that I could not allow myself to be compared to St. Peter, but that I still did not feel that I was sinking. “Commander, I am convinced that I will be saved in the cell as well as in the monk’s cell in freedom,” I said with all my courage. He became furious at my answer and ordered the guard to take me to solitary confinement – one of the harshest punishments in prison.

As I made my way to the exit, my fellow inmates began to murmur. “Stop him!” the commander shouted. Encouraged by the gesture of my colleagues, I turned to him and asked: “I thought you said, Commander, that re-education was free!” With false magnanimity he said to the guard: “Leave him alone, socialism will not stumble over a reactionary priest”.

But he didn’t forgive me for my courage. The next day he ordered my transfer to Zarca, a prison within a prison, the harshest, most severe solitary confinement, created especially for extermination purposes. They gave me three bundles of wood a night to make a fire in a tuque stove, which they didn’t even light properly because they ran out. At night I slept hunched over due to the cold. Besides, it was known that if you reached Zarca you were doomed to extermination; few escaped unharmed from that grave.

The pressure to surrender began again. They did not succeed.

After a few months of cruel imprisonment in Zarca, I had a feeling of the end, I felt every day that I was leaving, that I was ending. How many times had I had this feeling during the hard years of my imprisonment! During one of those long nights, when the anticipation was gradually wearing down my nerves and my body, I had images of my ordination. At the head of the Holy Table, on a chair, sat the martyred Bishop Nicolae Popovici. After he looked at me kindly and blessed me, I had a strong feeling of happiness. The next morning I was taken out of Zarca and returned to the prison, from which I was released on 1 August 1964.

When I said goodbye to Father Iovan, I overcame my shyness and asked him to do something unusual for a good Christian. I asked him to show me his feet. “Not for me, Father, – I can imagine. But I want my boys to see something they will understand later. To see what some of us have suffered for not compromising with a crooked society. Maybe they’ll live in a better world. But I don’t want them to forget where they started. And maybe they will manage to live in such a way that they will have nothing to blame themselves for, that they will have none of their father’s remorse.”

Father Iovan looked at me for a long time, hesitated and finally granted my request. The reality was beyond imagination. After thirty-five years without chains, Father Iovan’s legs still bleed and need to be bandaged daily.

In fact, because we were few like Father Iovan, the whole of Romanian society is still bleeding today…

(Interview by George Arion, 1999, A History of Contemporary Romanian Society in Interviews (1990 – 1999), Vol. II, “Flacăra Awards – Romania” Foundation, 1999, pp. 525-532).