Memoir-Confession – A life of torment in a Securitate document
In the archives of the former Securitate, in the persecution file of the priest Constantin Sârbu – inventoried in I258316, vol. II – in files 40-49, there is a handwritten note written by Father Sârbu in September 1962 in Viișoara – his forced residence in Bărăgan – and addressed to Patriarch Justinian. The document was intercepted “in time”, but it never reached its destination, instead ending up in the “operational fund” of the Securitate.
Memoirs – Confession
by the former parish priest and promoter of the construction of the church “Călărași Park” – Vergu in Bucharest,
Constantin Gh. Sîrbu,
to the Most Reverend Patriarch of Ungro-Vlavia – Bucharest.
Your Beatitude Patriarch,
The undersigned Sirbu Gh. Constantin, former parish priest and builder of the church “Parcul Călărași” – Vergu in Bucharest, born in 1905, January 10, in Cavatinești commune, Bujor district, Galați region, was sentenced for “favouritism” to 8 years correctional imprisonment, which I served on 8 January 1962, currently in D.O. (compulsory residence – n.n.), for 2 years, in com. Viișoara, Slobozia rayon, Bucharest region; with deep humility I bring to Your Gracious Highness the following:
Who I am:
Childhood
I am the son of a labourer, without land. I do not know my mother, who died when I was one year old. When my father heard the news of her death in hospital, he collapsed, had a nervous breakdown and has been partially insane ever since. I was taken in by his parents, also peasants, who raised me.
When I was 3 years old, we all moved to Galați, to the working class neighbourhood of 89 Lozoveni Street. This is where the ordeal began. My grandparents, who raised me with no other means of support than their arms, worked in the fields and received the fourth part of the product. As soon as I could hold a hoe, they took me to the fields to help them. Our food: polenta and corn borscht. This is not literature, this is hard reality.
My father also worked with his hands for the rich. But unable to bargain or demand his right to work, he was exploited by everyone, worked only for food, and on his days off he resorted to eating borscht with curds or my poor old parents’ potato soup, for which there were constant fights in the house.
This is the atmosphere I grew up in.
After finishing primary school no. 7 in Galați, my now elderly grandparents moved to Smârdan, near Galați, with their son and took me with them. The old man died, and one night my grandmother and I were thrown out by our daughter-in-law and found a home in an abandoned room in the courtyard of the village church.
Here my grandmother works at her fork and I toil without any income for one or another. That’s how I worked for four years, until I was 15.
My grandmother, a simple woman, without any knowledge of books – feeling sorry for me, who was nothing but a punk – sold her only asset, a heifer that was supposed to feed her old age, sent me to private tuition in Galați – I had lost four years – and ordered me to take the exam at the seminary in Galați, telling me: “If you succeed and study well, perhaps you will win the heart of your teachers who will help you finish school and become a priest. Become a priest because a priest never dies of hunger!” This was the testament of an old woman – who had struggled with poverty and hunger all her life – to her grandson.
This is not a figure of speech, but a life drenched in blood.
I took the seminary exams in 1919, the first after the First World War, and was awarded a scholarship, third out of 500 candidates. The teachers of the time, even though I came second every year, even though they had a heart – as my grandmother used to say – could not help me with anything, so I was often thrown out over the years for non-payment of fees, and had to work in the sawmill to earn money for the fees – so that I could study – and to tutor the boys of priests or preceptors for a book, a pen or a pencil.
That’s how I studied at the seminary. I did the higher course in two years – two classes a year – not because I liked learning, for no one learns for pleasure when hungry and naked, but to get away from misery and suffering once and for all. For my last class, the eighth, I went to the seminary centre in Roman, travelling on the buffers of the train because I had no money.
In the meantime, I worked with my arms to give my father bread, because my grandmother, with her twisted fork, couldn’t even give him the borscht with curds of the past.
Can these things be understood? Are there people who can understand them?
Youth, student life
But in me, with all the hard life I led, was born the desire to learn more books, so that my children would not have to suffer the hard life I had. That’s why I decided to study.
In the autumn of 1925 I enrolled at the Theological Faculty and the Music Conservatory in Bucharest. Before I could get a job as a church singer – almost two years of waiting – I slept on the floor of an attic in Amzei Square.
Amzei, and when the hostess wouldn’t take me in because I couldn’t pay, I slept in the North Railway Station, in the waiting room and secretly in the students’ dormitory – after 11 o’clock at night, when the administrator went to bed – instead of the rich boys who went out at night to cabarets or nightclubs; or I shared a bed with a more sympathetic colleague. After 2.30 p.m. we ate in the Gutenberg canteen, the leftovers of those who ate with a food card.
Later, in 1927, I joined the I.T.B. Athenaeum as a music master, and in this way I met the workers, fell in love with them and decided to become a priest and help them in my own ecclesiastical way. And God helped me in this respect, because in time I became a priest in the working class district of Bariera Vergului.
During my studies, I worked for four years in the missionary plan of the Zlatari Church, free of charge and in an administrative capacity, as well as collaborating on two magazines: “Orthodoxy” and “Fountain of Gifts”.
The fruit of my work since then, apart from the sermons that have flown away and the articles that are no longer read, is the choir that has been singing in that church for over thirty years, founded at a time when this action was regarded with suspicion because of its novelty.
The struggle for a parish and a wife
When I finished my studies in 1929, I began the struggle for a parish and a wife, because in my case it was a fierce struggle for both. For almost five years after my graduation I was unable to obtain a parish in the Archdiocese of Bucharest because I had no political protection. With great difficulty I was able to obtain a priest’s post in the Episcopal Cathedral of Huși through Bishop Nifon, who knew me.
If I was not lucky in getting a parish, I was lucky in winning the heart of a superior being, a graduate in letters and philosophy and a writer, named Maria K. Constantinescu – sister of the university professor D. G. K. Constantinescu – who, having a noble soul and appreciating my efforts and sufferings, accepted to be my wife.
The misfortune was that she belonged to an overlapping social category: her brothers were state counsellors, university professors, doctors, lawyers, etc., and I was… a proletarian! The family’s opposition, which lasted four years, was fierce and uncompromising. This opposition led to its defeat, but at the cost of my future wife’s health. I was not accepted into her family until her sister became so seriously ill with liver disease that she was thought to be dying. So I ended up with a wonderful but sick wife and a church almost 300 km away from Bucharest.
Priestly activity in Huși: organising the school of church singers, building the old people’s home
I was ordained priest of the Episcopal Cathedral of Huși on 1 September 1934, and my work and skills quickly won the heart of my bishop, who appointed me director and teacher of the choir school the same year.
The four classes of pupils were housed in two historic rooms in the bishopric, with rats crawling and squeaking under the rotten floors. We immediately rented a large house with a second floor – the Vașuta House – and organised the school according to the model of a seminary: with a library, a pharmacy, a recitation room, etc., and after much effort we obtained the necessary help from the legal authorities. The following year, in two separate rooms, we organised a boarding school with a canteen, where the pupils, the children of poor peasants who until then had lived promiscuously with their hosts, could sleep and eat for a ridiculous price. The school’s funds, 45,000 lei, collected in 50 years of existence, we increased to 750,000 lei in the four years I was there! In addition, we obtained from the State the wood for the construction of the school and carried out the necessary brickwork on the land. However, after being transferred to Bucharest, my successor in the school management did not want to build a school any more, but with a part of the money he bought an ordinary house, so as far as the building of this school was concerned, he chose, in Șincai’s words, “apple-pears”.
Building the care home
An Italian poet says: “You taught me, Mother, to go to church, but the way to church is through beggars and invalids”. This was also the situation in the Bishop’s Cathedral in Huși on holidays. The Jews had two asylums in the city, the Catholics had an orphanage run by nuns, and the poor Romanians in the three counties of the Huși diocese had no asylums. That is why, in parallel with my concern for the construction of the School of Singers, the desire to build a care home in Huși was ingrained in me from the very first days. When I presented my idea to the Bishop and asked for his blessing to build the home, His Holiness said: “I give you the blessing, but you will not be able to do anything, because the Moldavians are stupid! But the truth was that it was not the Moldavians who were stupid, but the rulers of the time.
We set up a building committee – the pensioners Jean David and Ticuleanu from Huși, members of this committee, are still alive today – and through a struggle with the City Hall we obtained, with great difficulty, a 9-hectare plot of land on the Coțoiul hill, on the outskirts of Huși. We began to collect funds from private individuals and institutions, and we popularised the idea of building the asylum through cultural festivals, with the help of the students of the singing school, right on the building site, where there used to be a hermitage. Two years later, in 1936, I laid the foundation stone alone, with only the workers and a fellow deacon, the future counsellor of Your Beatitude, Father F. Alexander, who, if you will kindly ask him, can confirm the truth of my words. Two years later, in 1938, the 22 rooms, 4/4 m, plus hall and outbuildings, were finished. When the bishop visited it, accompanied by Prof. Boroianu, he said: “I was hoping to find an asylum with 2-3 rooms and I find a palace! The Moldavians were not stupid, but the problem was elsewhere!
This activity brought me, without thinking about it, the position of Dean of Falciu County at the age of 30 and the wish of the Most Holy Bishop to become his advisor, dignities that I did not like. I was attracted by the sincere and warm soul of the simple people among whom I had been born and whom I wanted to help, comfort and encourage, in the ecclesiastical way, of course, because I knew no other.
Priest in Bucharest, without a church, without a rectory and without a salary for 2 years
But because I belonged to a miserable social category, without political protection (it is well known that at that time one could not even get a job as a porter or a teacher without protection), despite all the merits I had shown – because my bishop had declared that “the priest Sîrbu is a loss for Huși and a gain for Bucharest” – I could not, like the others, get a parish according to the law. I only received the parish of “Parcul Călărași” – Vergu, newly founded in October 1938, without a church, without a parish house, without land and without a salary for two years.
The organisation of the chapel in the cellar of the hospital “St. Helena”.
The Vergului district in 1938, when I was appointed parish priest, was not like it is today, with blocks of flats, paved streets and cultural institutions. Instead, the poor people, modest workers with many children, lived in terrible shantytowns, with dirt on the ground and unpaved streets.
There were no cultural institutions in the area. Apart from the hospital, which had its own sign, the only other building that looked good was the “Cultural Athenaeum” in Mihai Bravu St., on the corner of Muncii Bld., was actually used as a dancing school, and in the other rooms: as a bank! More practical and money-making things!
The only man who still tried to do cultural work at that time was Dr. Victor Gomoiu, general director of the “Sfânta Elena” hospital in the district. In the large hall of the hospital, he organised conferences with slides, but the method used to discipline the hall – beatings – was not the most appropriate. As a result, participants from the neighbourhood broke windows and the meetings had to be suspended.
I knew that there was a good spark in the soul of the people and I tried to ignite it. So, in the uninsulated basement of the hospital, with its six small windows on Muncii Bld., whose windows were forever broken by the tips of the locals’ boots, I drew a white cross on each window. I personally, together with two old men, old Ganciu and Rădulescu, evacuated the two wagons of sand stored there and brought my table, my icon and my candle.
We had our first Christmas Mass in 1938, with a sermon. Very few people: 7-8. What to see and what to hear in a shabby cellar, with a sour, musty smell, and water running down the walls! And the vestments, rags taken from the inventory of the church of Silvestru, although the church had several dozen of the finest vestments. But in those days, who would have thought to lend a helping hand to a priest in need? (…)
And yet, in those days, there was such a thirst for a good word that went to the heart, that the worthy workers of the Vergu district and the surrounding area soon filled the basement and listened to the Word through the windows on the street, that we had to open a corridor next door, with all the spiteful propaganda that the neighbouring colleagues were making among the faithful, telling them that this was not a church, but a cellar, that there were toilets there, that there was a school for small children above, etc., but the people did not listen. Are the people better and wiser than the priest? I don’t know. Why did the priest brothers insult me when I did nothing to them and did not disturb any of them in their church? I still don’t know.
Parallel to this action, I think we did something more positive: we helped needy families throughout the year; and at Easter and Christmas, 200 families each received a 10 kg bag of food: bacon, flour, soap, etc., and in winter and wood, the most needy. Doctor Iancu Dinu and Doctor Maria Ursulescu gave free consultations to the sick, and the Church provided free medicines. A sales service distributed good books, which we recommended from the altar at the end of each service. A library of selected books was also available on loan from the church. I won’t recount the difficulties I had during this time, which culminated in a joint investigation by the Holy Patriarchate and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, accusing me of using sectarian methods. I was, of course, found not guilty and those who hatched it in the dark were shamed.
Some of the thousands of donations may still be in the files of the Vergu Church.
I have observed that people steal and kill because, among other things, they are destitute. That is why, in addition to my preaching, I organised a Samaritan action to help the needy, to console and encourage the afflicted and to put the unemployed to work. To tell the truth, none of those I recommended for service ever shamed me. As a result, thefts and murders have decreased and, as Dr. Gomoiu testified, “those who used to break the windows of the hospital now bow down to the little church there when they pass the hospital”.
For seven years I worked in that little basement – church!
The building of the Vergu Church. The struggle for the land
From the first moment I arrived in the area, I had my eye on the land where the church is now being built. Little did I know how many forces of darkness would be unleashed against me for the palm of land needed to build it.
I initiated the forms of expropriation of the land, but met with stiff resistance from the wealthy owners, Al. Zisso and Ganciu Stoian, in coalition with the Royal House, represented by Dr. Victor Gomoiu, Director General of the Royal Establishments “Saint Helena”. The rich wanted to build blocks of flats and shops on this land in order to generate personal income, and the royal house wanted the establishments to have a church – as the Brancovenesc Hospital had – but without making any sacrifices, only to benefit and be rewarded with the sacrifices and work of others. The third factor was me, the priest, who wanted to build an independent church for the people over the heads of the rich and the royal family. From the struggle of these three factors, the priest Constantin Sîrbu emerged, who fought for the just cause of the district. But with what sacrifices! For (almost) five years, from January ’38 to January ’43, when I received the land, how much personal expense, how many lawsuits, how many humiliations I endured from the rich, who bribed the City Hall, and from the Royal House, who intervened so that the land behind the hospital could be used to build the church!
I wrote 50 memoirs, which I typed at night and presented to the authorities during the day, asking for justice and for the land to be expropriated for the benefit of the Church. But in vain!
After so many years of waiting and sacrifice, after we had managed to get the forms through the three courts despite the resistance of the bigwigs, just as we were waiting for the expropriation to take place, we received the following reply from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers: “The expropriation in favour of the church is cancelled. The church will be built on the land given by the hospital.
Then, in my despair, I decided not to give myself any rest until I had solved this problem of the land for the construction of the church. With the 51st Memoir, and taking advantage of a favourable circumstance, through vicissitudes and dramas which it is not my place to recount here, I obtained the settlement of the land for the construction of the church by the High Arbitration, composed of the then Patriarch, Nicodemus, the Minister of the Interior, the Mayor General of the capital, the undersigned, and the Epitropists of the Church.
The result was that we won the battle, and on 1 January 1943, after a fierce and bitter struggle, we obtained possession of the land on which the Vergu Church was to be built.
Construction of the “Călărași Park” Church – Vergu, the Conference Hall, the Bell Tower and the Parish House
On 28 July 1943, with great joy and rejoicing, we laid the foundation stone of the church. The church was equipped with a modern conference hall in the basement, which, like the church, could seat more than 2000 people. This model of the church, which I had never seen before and which had been designed by the Albanian architect Sp. Nicolau, drew a lot of epithets from me, such as crazy, unbelieving, unconscious, etc. These were the epithets of the uninformed, who saw the church as nothing more than a place to hold services and preach sermons. That was all. But I didn’t see it that way and I don’t see it that way now. But a church, to be necessary, must be active and satisfy the human soul in all its fullness. My church had to be a missionary church. The lower room was to give holy teaching to all, simple and learned, through a system of lay missionary work – in the sense of St. John Chrysostom – which I need not explain here. A soup kitchen was to be established next door, in accordance with the words of the Saviour: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”. Then the orphanage, the religious cinema with a religious theatre evening, etc. These were dreams that never came true for me and will never come true.
In the meantime we had collected about 1,000,000 lei, about 150,000 bricks, sand, gravel, cement, lime, etc. The work on this missionary church went very well, but the American bombing in April 1944 put an end to the work, which we did not resume until 1946. At Christmas 1946, with God’s help, we consecrated the second chapel, also in the basement. But this time it was a wonderful, large, bright, welcoming basement, the basement of “our church”. A little later we laid the foundations for the bell tower and the parish house.
Activity in the basement of the great church
Thousands of people, the best Christians in Bucharest, began to pour into the basement of this church. This gave me boundless strength and impetus.
And since 1947 was the year of the famine that struck Moldavia, I made some impassioned appeals that found a strong response in the hearts of the faithful, who donated money, food and clothing so generously that I made the most beautiful collection for the hungry of Moldavia. Thanks to this, I was appointed to represent the distribution of two wagons of food and clothes to the hungry in Dancu and Cârlig, near Iași. On this occasion, the Metropolitan of Moldavia sent me a beautiful letter of thanks and the Patriarchate offered me the cross of iconom stravophore. It is important to note that I received the rank of iconom stravophore not for the construction of the church and other settlements, but for the collection for the starving people of Moldavia. And for the construction of the church and other works I received something else: tears, humiliations, thorns…
Is this the way it has to be? Perhaps. But I don’t understand them…
In addition to the usual masses and sermons, I organised a choir of eighty volunteers who gave two concerts and a radio broadcast. The choir was directed by two conductors, also volunteers: Professor Victor Giuleanu and composer Gheorghe Bazavan. With this volunteer choir and with the help of other choirs from Bucharest, conducted by Prof. Chirescu, Prof. Lungu, etc., we organised 45 religious concerts in this basement – at a time when religious concerts were not in vogue, as they were later – in which the most important personalities from the ecclesiastical and secular world gave lectures. The purpose of these concerts was, on the one hand, to popularise the idea of the need for this building and, on the other hand, to gain supporters and the means to make this idea a reality. And I think the plan was a good one, because it had a success rarely seen in the Church and it had effective results.
But this is the place to digress. While I was in the full swing of the implementation, barely four months after my installation in this cellar, but after nine years of struggle and suffering, during which the Patriarchate did not contribute a single penny for “lack of funds”, while I was still with the church above, still uncovered, I received as help – in a parish of 416 families, as many as there were at that time – the second priest. This priest also had a church in Bucharest, but his colleague was very busy as director of the Patriarchal Workshops, and the church was not visited by the faithful. Because no church fills itself, it takes great effort, suffering, enthusiasm and inner consumption. And so he left the one where he needed to work and came to me, where he felt no need.
My tragedy is increased by this. And here’s why. I was a widower since January 1941. I had only lived with my wife for seven years! I was left with two motherless daughters: one was two when her mother died and the other was five! The drama of the widowed priest is known in theory, but in practice only those who have lived through this fire know it. We had no help in the house, so as not to give the world the opportunity to talk and destroy the whole work of the Church. So I did all the housework myself, as best I could. I tried to be cheerful so that my children would not feel that they had no mother, as I had felt when I was an orphan! My only refuge was the altar. Only there could I pray, only there could I cry, only there could I find strength. But now they took away my altar! And I had to accept the situation because I had no one to support me.
But this brought me additional burdens. In addition to my family drama, in addition to the work I was doing to raise funds and create an atmosphere conducive to completing what I had started, there was now the added worry and effort I had to make to keep my colleague happy, so that any dissatisfaction he might have with me would not spill over to the people and spoil all the prestige I needed to carry out my work. And I succeeded! But with how much suffering, with how much effort, no one knows but the One Above and myself!
In April 1948, the church was finished and adorned with everything necessary for the great consecration. But here is a new suffering that I must confess to you:
The consecration of the Church has always been an important event for the people. Knowing this, I prepared the people spiritually two months beforehand and, with their help, gathered all that was necessary for the Consecration; and two weeks before this act was to take place, I made a report, as is proper, to Your Most High Beatitude for the approval of this Consecration. But I do not know why you did not approve this great consecration, but only the small one! In all my actions, great and small, I have been an honest man of my word. And by this I have won the people, in the humble works I have done. Could I have been ashamed? No, because it was not right! And then, in my boundless grief, I ran to the Great Master, the One who has always delivered me from all difficulties and through whom I have achieved all victories. I knelt down and cried with tears for help and light, for I have only Him in this world. And I received the thought from above to ask Doctor Gomoiu to intercede with Your Most High Holiness to approve my consecration. And oh, miracle! He who had once been my greatest personal enemy became, thanks to my work, my greatest friend (I will describe this scene of his change towards the end). And although he had to give a lecture at the Athenaeum, he postponed it by telephone and came immediately, accompanied by two epithets and myself. Your Beatitude received His Lordship and the bishops, but you could not receive me. I was deeply distressed, humiliated and saddened because I was not worthy to see the face of my Patriarch, so that the whole time I was talking to you, I sat in the opposite wing of the palace and cried hot tears, which my Great and Good Lord may have recorded somewhere!
Of course, they agreed to the great consecration, and so, on Palm Sunday 1948, after ten years of service in the cellars and basements, the consecration took place, attended by about five thousand souls.
This was the end of a great and beautiful chapter in the history of this church, built in a time of instability – war – but for that very reason wonderful for the confirmation of the faith. The poor energy of the priest and the sacrifices of this gentle and good people, before whom I bow in reverence, had prevailed.
In 1950, the plastering of the exterior of the church was finished, a plaster that still stands today.
In the meantime we had converted fifty families to the true faith, including a Franciscan priest, Gh. Frenț, a doctor in Roman and a writer, whom we anointed in the church below. At the same time, I received a delegation of three Franciscan priests, Roman Catholics, who brought with them seven other priests – ten in all – who wished to return to the bosom of the Orthodox Church. When I presented this to His Beatitude Patriarch Nicodemos, he said to me: “We have enough Orthodox priests, we don’t know what to do with them. We don’t need anymore Catholics!” I will refrain from making any comment…
In 1951, as a spiritual break, and in order to see to what extent the Christians understood the meaning of the sermons I had been preaching for so many years, I set up a canteen for the elderly poor in the basement, as an experiment and with the approval of the state authorities.
This canteen, which I set up, actually brought me misfortune. One of the two volunteer cooks, Bertha Hintermeyer, belonged, although she didn’t tell me, to an organisation whose leader, when he came to the church twice and saw so many people, wrote a poem in praise of me in his notebook and gave it to me[1].
I advised him to destroy it because it was a disgrace, because it contained insulting words against Stalin, but I was not good enough to destroy it myself. This was fatal for me. When I was arrested and found the poem with my name on it, it was concluded that I was also part of the organisation. I was investigated and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, which I served, and on 8 January 1962 I was sentenced to two more years of forced domicile in Viișoara.
But even now I am telling you in spirit, for the memory of my dead wife and for the health of my children, on this piece of paper, no matter what happens and at any risk, because otherwise I have reached the limit of my patience: I only knew this organisation in court!
At that time – before the arrest – I was quite content. I had finished building the church, the children had grown up, people loved me, understood me, helped me and, why shouldn’t I say it, thanks to my popularity I earned more than I deserved, so I didn’t know what to do with the money. I was giving left and right to those who needed and asked me, but God was blessing these gifts more and more.
A serious person told me that some priests – who could they be? – had told you that I was stealing from the church, to which Your Grace replied: “You steal too, but do what he did!”
Your Eminence, I take God as my witness that I did not steal. Not because the seminary or theology taught me not to steal. It was not they who taught me not to steal and to fear God, but my holy grandmother, that simple woman I told you about, who sold her heifer and stayed with the pitchfork just to make me a priest.
She taught me from an early age not to touch a needle. And I listened to her because she was pure of heart and kind. That’s why she increased the wealth of the parish in my hand. In the home, in the canteen, in the church and everywhere.
Your Eminence, not only did I not steal, but in 1941, with receipt number 150, I gave 100,000 lei, all the money I had at that time, as the dowry of my orphan girls. And in order to stimulate the collection of funds for the construction of the church, I announced this to the people, to shut the mouths of those scoffers who say: “The priest always asks for donations, but he never sacrifices! The first receipt for the Church, for 2,000 lei, begins with my money, then 12,000, then 5,000, etc., apart from the money spent on the Church, which is not written in the account, but which someone in heaven must have written. And whenever it happened that on a day of walking I didn’t collect anything, my wife, another saint, would take 500 lei from her purse and give it to me for the Church, saying: “See, the good Jesus has rewarded you for the footprints of your steps!”
I left my cancer-stricken wife in bed for the Church. I left my children with scarlet fever at home for the church. I’ve walked to raise money for the church until my feet were swollen. I have talked and had telephone calls until I was dizzy for the Church. I’ve cried and fallen asleep in my clothes, exhausted, for the church.
That’s how the Church of Vergu was built, your most blessed Patriarch!
Postlude and conclusion
Most Holy Father! From what I have said, you have seen, on the one hand, my tormented life and, on the other, my struggle and striving for the relief of human suffering and for the glory of our Holy Orthodox Church. At this historic moment in the history of my country, it cannot be denied that I did everything in my power for the good of the people. For if each of the 11,000 priests had built a house with 22 rooms for 100 old people, like my house in Huși, 1,100,000 old people would have found shelter and food in these houses. And if every priest had not built a church – because perhaps there would have been no need – but at least a conference hall like the one below, under the Vergu Church, and if conferences had been organised for the culturalisation of the masses, with filmed masses and catecheses for children, young people, workers and servants, with a cinema and a religious theatre, then 22,000,000 people, as many as we do not have in the country, would have been able to drink their souls from the pure springs of faith and culture.
My problem must be seen and solved not according to Marxist-Leninist criteria, but according to the positive aspirations and achievements I had in the historical framework of my time and with the means I had at my disposal at that time, which were zero. Moreover, misunderstanding and enmity!
And then you could judge whether my place is among those who must bear the stamp of shame and disapproval as an “enemy of the people” or “unworthy” of the priestly mission, or whether, wisely weighing my positive deeds, you would grant me clemency and place me among modest but honest and sincere people.
For I see that it was only after six months of waiting that I was finally allowed to receive Holy Communion in the village chapel here, but with the words “without any right in spiritual matters”. The other priests, including the present one, Father Iana, a native of Banat, officially obtained the right to receive Holy Communion with all spiritual rights, with the approval of the Father Protopope of the Slobozia district.
Only poor Father Sîrbu, although he belongs to the diocesan obedience of Your Holiness, does not have the right like the other priests, but only the right to sing at the pew!
My soul weeps for the fact that now, in my old age, for almost eight years I have not served those of the priesthood! It is true that I do not have any vestments, because mine – including my personal vestments, which were given to me by the people when I was awarded the rank of Iconom Stravophore for my work for the starving people of Moldavia – have remained in the church of Vergu, and I do not think of asking for them again. But I do not have the necessary state of mind to serve in the unequal conditions of humiliation in which I find myself.
Can Your Most High Beatitude not make amendments of this injustice done to me? And if I do not have the same rights of spiritual service as the other priests who have been here, can I at least be told why?
I humbly await an answer to this question.
Your Most Blessed Father! Dr. Gomoiu – a servant of the royal house, but a bitter opponent of the building of the Vergu Church on the present site – once told me, towards the end of 1947, on the occasion of my visit to him at Epiphany:
“I, Dr Gomoiu, scientist, university professor, president of the International Society for the History of Medicine, director general, etc. (he began to list all his titles), bow down before the work of Your Holiness! He kissed my hand devoutly and added: “From now on, every word of Your Holiness, at any hour of the day or night, is a commandment for me! So it was that when I asked him to come to see Your Most High Beatitude for the approval of the consecration of the Church, he interrupted the conference he had to give at the Athenaeum and immediately responded to my call.
I have no need, Your Most Eminent Patriarch, for anyone to “bow down before my work” or to acknowledge my merits. But now, in my old age, for I am poor and ill, I need a home, a family home, which I have lacked since my childhood. I need a little peace at the grave of my wife, the only person who loved and appreciated me in my life, under the eaves of my daughters’ house in Bucharest, daughters who do not know their mother because they have been orphans since 1941 and I raised them in widowhood, in terrible suffering, with one hand cradling their hard and orphaned childhood and with the other hand building the church, the conference hall, the parish house, the canteen, the asylum and all the other things that a poor, desperate priest did for his suffering brothers: The people.
And for this I humbly ask you, most gracious Father, to help me:
1. To intervene in the right place to raise my enforced house arrest.
2. To give me a parish in Bucharest, so that now, in my old age, I may find peace, perhaps even in the church of Vergu, in whose walls I have placed my soul and the soul of my wife, and where I would have liked to close my eyes in the midst of my parishioners. I know that it is in your power to do so, if only you will.
3. In the meantime, help me financially. Winter is knocking at the door, it is raining in the house and I have no fire wood, no food and I am naked. My children, who are at the beginning of their careers and have children of their own, can help me with very little, and I cannot work because I am ill. I need and have no one to turn to except Your Most High Beatitude.
4. To be placed in the same ministry as Father Iana, the pastor of the village church, who is also serving an enforced house arrest penalty. I believe that this time I will not have to wait for an answer, which I will receive in six months. For by then I may be dead.
I remain forever Your Most High, Most Merciful, humble and devoted spiritual son,
The commune of Viișoara,
Slobozia Rayon, Bucharest Region.
3rd September 1962.
Constantin Sârbu,
Former priest and parish priest of the church of Călărași Park – Vergu
and a supporter of the construction of this church.
(Document published in Tears and Grace, Bonifaciu Publishing House, 2010, pages 10-29, edited by Diaconești Monastery)
[1] This is Constantin Dărășteanu, former member of the National Peasant Party, initiator of the anti-communist resistance group “Salvatorii Neamului”. As we learn from the Securitate’s interrogation of Father Sârbu on 19 April 1954, Dărășteanu visited him in the parish on several occasions and asked for his support in spreading anti-regime manifestos, which Father Sârbu refused to give. But the security service was looking for reasons to arrest Father Constantin Sârbu, whose Christian missionary work in the capital could no longer be tolerated by the atheist regime. As a result, under sentence no. 2168 of the Bucharest Military Tribunal, Father Sârbo was convicted, along with 23 other members of the Salvatori Neamului movement, of “conspiracy against social order” and “possession and failure to hand over currency to the R.P.R.”. In addition to his collaboration with Dărășteanu, the investigation accused him of having received assistance in the construction of the church from Marshal Antonescu (shot by the communists in Peach Valley), and of having mentioned the Marshal and Corneliu Codreanu, the leader of the Legionary Movement, in the parastases (cf. “Martyrs for Christ in Romania during the Communist Regime”, published by the Biblical Institute, Bucharest 2007, pp. 652-653).
As expected, the fate of the memoirs submitted by Father Constantin Sârbu also comes from the Securitate archives. In the same tracking file I258316, volume II, pages 86-87, there is an informative note by agent Dobrogeanu, in which it is mentioned that the memoir was brought in September by doctor Maria Ursulescu, an old acquaintance of Father Sârbu, and left with the Patriarchal Advisor Petre Alexandru to be submitted to the Patriarch. In the meantime, the councillor has gone on holiday. In October, Mrs Ursulescu returned to the Patriarchate to find out the result, but after asking in all the offices, the memoir could not be found (it had been taken from the Patriarchate offices by the Securitate and added to Father’s file, where it remains to this day). As a result, on 29 November, Dr. Ursulescu returned on behalf of Father Sârbu with an identical note, which was registered at the Patriarchate under no. 19739/1962. On the 8th of December, the memorandum was presented to the Patriarch, who referred it “to the permanence of the Eparchial Council”, saying to the councillors: “Why, what should I do with them? Who made him do what he did? I give him to you, see what you can do with him… !”
Dobrogeanu’s memorandum ends by noting that the Permanent Bureau had not yet discussed it, and the Security Office drafts a report – also in the same file, on page 88 – on the contents of Dobrogeanu’s memorandum:
“Sârbu Constantin is known in our records to have engaged in hostile activities. Dr. Maria Ursulescu is not known. The agent was instructed to talk to Maria Ursulescu in order to find out what Father Sârbu intends to do apart from the demands made in his memoirs. He was also instructed to speak to Maria Ursulescu to establish the specific nature of her links with Father Sârbu. Also to find out what the Patriarch and other clerics will give Father Sârbu in response to his memorial.
We will take steps to ensure that Father Sârbu is placed in the Viișoara municipality, where he is obliged to live. A copy of this letter will be given to Captain Săndulescu Nicolae for use and action. A copy will be sent to Department 7.
The next meeting takes place on 28 December 1962.
Securitate Captain Bujeniță Dumitru.”
Other references to the processing of the memo are no longer to be found in the prosecution file. However, we know that in May 1963, when Father Calciu arrived in Viișoara, Father Constantin Sârbu was serving in the village church. In 1964, together with the other political prisoners, he was released from compulsory residence and was not allowed to return to Vergului Church – his foundation – but was appointed parish priest of Sapienței Church in Bucharest, where he served until his death on 23 October 1975.