“God loved Father John very much”
Of all the prisoners who in one way or another enjoyed the blessing of Fr. Arsenie [Boca], Fr. Ioan received the longest sentence, 25 years. I believe that no Romanian priest has been more slandered and insulted than this priest, an example of Christian life. The most absurd accusations, the most vicious lies have accompanied his ordeal.
If I think about a statement made by Mother Sica, God loved Father Ioan very much because he found him capable of carrying such a heavy cross.
I knew Father Ioan as Silviu Iovan. He came to see me the day I finished my work at the F.O.R.S. He gave me “The Discipleship of Christ”, this sublime “osana” to God, this hymn of love that has never been equalled. Father Ioan’s name is still linked to this book. Silviu had a soul with the clarity of a child, a purity that could not be broken by any demon hungry to pervert great souls. Sometimes, in the dungeon, when I was offered the sad spectacle of the unmanly man, I thought of Silviu as a rehabilitation of MAN.
I remember him in an early spring twilight, in a Cluj where the undead of arrests did not yet haunt. We were returning from Zorica [Lațcu n.n.], where the people of Cluj, associated with Sâmbăta and Father Arsenie, had gathered to celebrate the birthday of the poet of whom our teacher, Dimitrie Popovici, had said that she had managed to reach the heaven of pure poetry.
It had been a wonderful day, in the spirit of a Saturday, ending with that sublime “O Gladsome Light” so often sung at vespers in the monastery. As we were leaving, Silviu suggested that we go for a walk in the spring. It was the time when day turns to night and the sky turns a deep blue. It was snowing sparsely, with large flakes that looked like white butterflies or flower petals against the blue background. Silviu was in a good mood. He told me about Ducici’s poetry, about blue poems, about blue flowers, about blue skies and blue waters, there was an overflow of azure in his words that gave the moment a certain enchantment. I called this moment “the blue hour” and identified it with the personality of Father Ioan.
During the long years of imprisonment, when the shutters or the lime on the windows allowed me to see the sky, I contemplated this moment of the waning day, after which the “blue hour” began. I had managed, in time, to distinguish from the shades of blue of that hour what the next day would be like: frosty or warm, rainy or clear, calm or windy. I would meet Father Ioan again in freedom after 1989. My God, what a thrill, what a reunion!
(Aspazia Oțel-Petrescu, Doamne, strigat-am!, 2nd edition, Platytera Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 56-57)