Fr. Ioan Negruțiu (en)

“Command me, Jesus, if I am worthy of it, to crucify myself on a cross with You”.

Dialogue between Vartan Arachelian and Fr. Ioan Negruțiu, broadcast on TVR on 8 April 1990, later published in written form in the book “The Word that Builds”: – I would like to ask you to tell us a little about yourself, because I have heard from your friends that you have suffered a lot for your faith, twenty years in prison for your faith in Jesus Christ. Where shall we start? – I am originally from the district of Bihor. I was born in 1915, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire still existed. Therefore, three years after I was born, the border […]

The priest who refused to be taken out of the concentration camp

Priest Ioan Negruțiu belongs to the generation that “decided to give their lives for the defence of the Romanian faith and soul”, a generation that was “martyred by the communists after their complete takeover of Romania”. It is difficult to reconstruct his spiritual, theological and intellectual profile on the basis of the few documents preserved in the archives of our Diocesan Centre and the brief information published so far, without knowing the dramatic moments of suffering, deprivation and humiliation he experienced in the communist dungeons. For this purpose, a rigorous documentation in the archives of the National Council for the […]

The prisons of Father Ioan Negruțiu

The year 1948 was marked in Romania by numerous political, cultural, social and ecclesiastical changes. The communist regime subjected the Church to a series of transformations aimed at freeing it from its “bourgeois-medieval past” and adapting it to the new “socio-political” conditions. We do not wish to discuss the regime’s intentions towards the Church, but these could not be achieved without destroying some personalities and servants of this fundamental institution for the Romanian people. The communist regime saw real obstacles in the young theologians trained under the care of prominent Church hierarchs. One such case is that of Father Ioan […]

Father Ioan Negruțiu – “an exceptional man in every respect”

We were scattered throughout the cell, alone in the cell or in groups of two or three. Depending on the movements ordered by the administration, according to criteria we never understood, we had new acquaintances or reunions. I ended up with Father Ioan Negruțiu, from Bihor. Sent to the Theological Seminary in Galați in 1926 on a state scholarship (or supported by the parishioners of his native parish), he graduated in 1934 and became a celibate priest with a special dispensation and later a monk. He was a prize-winner at school and, after graduating, a teacher. He was an extraordinary […]