Memoir on the activity of Bishop Nicolae Popovici from 1940 to 1944
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Blessed Nicolae Popovici, Bishop of Oradea, Legionary[1]
Colleague and close friend of the professor-priest Dr. Liviu Stan, first advisor for cults to Horia Sima and Director General of the Ministry of Cults during the Legionary Movement, His Beatitude Nicolae Popovici is a supporter of the Legionary Movement, as is his Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan, from whose advice he never departed.
It is in this Legionary spirit that the official pamphlet of the Diocese of Oradea, “The Romanian Law”, is written.
Here are just two examples:
a. Pastoral to the clergy and faithful of the Diocese of Oradea on the occasion of Christmas 1940, no. 770/1940:
“My beloved spiritual sons,
This year, the whole world, engulfed by the flames of war, but especially our nation and our country, are celebrating the Nativity of the Lord in great need and distress. The body of our beloved nation and country has been mercilessly and unjustly torn apart, east and west, south and north, and many millions of our beloved brethren have once again fallen into bitter and heavy bondage. Tens of thousands of Romanians, having left their warm, familiar and fatherly homes, took refuge in the land of their ancestors, conquered by their enemies, in the land that remained free, and tens of thousands more remained there, waiting and hoping in the silence of their souls for better times, were robbed of their homes and all their savings by gendarmes and, after being mocked, humiliated and frightened in the dungeon with the firing squad, were taken to the border in cattle cars between bayonets and thrown over the border. “
b. We quote from “Romanian Law” No. 3-4/942, some passages from the article “Attitude of an English Archbishop” (official sheet of the Diocese of Oradea), in which he ironises the resignation of the old Archbishop: “The Archbishop is in full vigour (78 years old) and has fulfilled his mission too well, so he had to resign. The archbishop prayed too much and disturbed his flock with his prayers. It seems paradoxical and yet it is so. But let’s explain. The archbishop has been praying too much lately, but he was praying for Stalin, the “defender of freedom and civilisation”, and somehow he was praying not for the multitude of his misdeeds, but for his health and victory. This way of praying is a disgrace, it is a betrayal of Jesus Christ, and surely even among the English there must have been some men of good sense who discovered the error of their shepherd, for they are not so naive as not to have heard of the criminal exploits of Stalin, the murderer of millions of Christians and the destroyer of the altar of Christ.
That is why the faithful were angry with the Archbishop, and rightly so. Didn’t the Archbishop know that Stalin tore down the crosses and put up in their place the statue of Judas, depicting him with a threatening fist to heaven, or breaking the Holy Cross and trampling the Holy Gospel under his feet [?] etc.
Marshal Antonescu’s collaborator
In accordance with his legionary, fascist and anti-democratic convictions, His Eminence Nicolae Popovici became a great supporter of Marshal Antonescu.
The official leaflet of the diocese is used for the propaganda of Marshall Antonescu’s policy. Every request of His Eminence Nicolae Popovici is fulfilled by the Marshal. In order to illustrate His Holiness’ opinion of Marshal, we quote from the Eparchial Bulletin “Romanian Law” No. 5-6/941 some passages from the speech given by His Holiness Nicolae Popovici on the occasion of the graduation of the Normal School of Leadership in Beiuș, under the direction of the Diocese, although the Marshal was not present, but only his representative. Among other things, His Beatitude Nicolae Popovici told the audience on the occasion of the proclamation of Marshal Antonescu as the founder of the Bishopric of Oradea:
“We owe this joy to the care and the broad and superior understanding that General Ion Antonescu, Head of the Romanian State and President of the Council of Ministers, has of the role of the Church in the State. Taking into account, on the one hand, the great loss of cultural institutions that we suffered due to the division of the diocese, and, on the other hand, the need to provide our diocese with an instrument of propaganda so that it could fulfil its ecclesiastical, cultural and national mission in the best possible way, His Excellency has kindly approved, by Decree-Law no. 3747 of 9 November 1940, that the Normal School for Children’s Conductors in Beiuș should be transformed into the Romanian Orthodox Confessional Normal School and that it, together with all its movable and immovable property, should become the full property and jurisdiction of our Diocese. With this act, General Antonescu became the great benefactor of our diocese and he is inscribed in the ranks and in the pomp of the most worthy and eternal memory of the Diocese of Oradea.
Pour down from the azure skies and come among us at these moments, you, the first founder of the Diocese of Oradea! You, Blessed Bishop Roman Ciorogar, martyr of the nation! And you, the singer of our old and new sorrows, Octavian Goga! Come, you who, from your distant graves, still today bear witness and seal, like a seal of fire, the sacred and indescribable rights of our nation over its ancestral land, come and embrace, with a thrilling embrace of your great spirit, the new founder of our diocese, General Ion Antonescu, who comes today, on the feast of the victory of ecumenical Orthodoxy, to complete the third of the founders of our diocese. Come! and with God’s will, bless him also for the much greater and harder work of being, of being able to be, as soon as possible, at the head of our young and beloved King, and together with all the other men who love our nation and country (i.e. with the Legionaries), and the founder of the reconstruction of our holy borders, etc.”.
The closest inspirer of Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan of Transylvania gave him the suggestion to undertake, together with all the Transylvanian bishops, a missionary journey to Basarabia and Transnistria, which he did. This is what the official newspaper of the Diocese of Oradea, “Legea Românească”, wrote about this missionary journey, in no. 18/941. We quote from the article “The Army of Jesus”:
“In the apocalyptic clash between the two worlds, God and Satan, a human problem of cardinal importance is resolved…
The army of the Waldensians of Ardeal, [land] planted by the cross and by suffering, which has set out in the footsteps of the plundering hosts, is once again a sign that even today we are carried by the Romanian law, which means faith in Christ and in the nation…
The Bihor of our sorrows… finds consolation in the most sublime moments of the conflict, having sent its shepherd, accompanied by priests, with the cross on his head to the battle in the East…
We know that our Vicar (Fr. Nicolae Popovici), with his pastoral and Romanian youthful energy, will bring us from there not only the joy of rediscovering the Bessarabian lands, but also the certainty of reliving the joy of national fulfilment so long awaited by us”.
All the bishops of Transylvania, including His Grace Nicolae Popovici, accompanied by priests, arrived in Bucharest on 2 September 1941 and, at a banquet given in the Patriarchal Palace by Professor I.D. Ștefănescu, another supporter of Marshall Antonescu, they met Mihail Antonescu, Vice-President and President ad interim of the Council of Ministers. On this occasion, words of assurance were given to Marshal Antonescu for all the unstinting support of the Archbishops of the Ardel.
On 3 September 1941, the Archbishops of Transylvania arrived in Chișinău, where they issued an appeal to the people of Bessarabia. We quote some passages from this appeal:
“Dear Bessarabian brothers,
We, the hierarchs of our Church in Transylvania and a number of priests from Transylvania… We have come to pray with you for the defeat of the enemy and for the eternal establishment of the borders of our dear Romania, where the resurrected courage of the ancestors leads them…
All this has passed like a bad dream (i.e. Soviet rule). God, through the courage of our brave soldiers who shed their blood for the freedom of your soul, has protected you from even greater hardships that were to come. Let us give glory to Him, let us be grateful to our dead and wounded, let us thank our King and the Head of State, Marshal Ion Antonescu, who undertook this brave deed out of love for Christ and our nation…
The enemies of the Cross and of the Romanian salvation flee scattered and will be consumed like the darkness before the light…
Embracing you with our love in the Lord, we impart to you our Archbishop’s blessing.
Chișinău, 3 September 1941
(ss) Nicolae, Metropolitan of Ardeal
Andrei, Bishop of Arad
Nicolae, Bishop of Oradea
Vasile, Bishop of Timișoara
Veniamin, Bishop of Caransebeș”
In Chișinău they took part in the service for the burial of the bodies of the alleged victims of the NKVD, then went to Tiraspol and returned to Ardeal.
Back in Beiuș, His Eminence Nicolae Popovici gave a pastoral address to the clergy and the faithful, in which he recounted the journey of the Ardeleni Chiriarchs (see “Romanian Law”, the official organ of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Oradiei no. 20/941), from which we quote:
“My beloved spiritual sons,
In 1940, the year of great sorrow for the Church and for our nation, the godless Russians cunningly took from us, and in an hour of great hardship and great need for us, the precious land of Bessarabia and Bucovina, bringing with them all the devastation of a life lived in unbelief…
They began to close our churches, to turn them into sheds, stables and places of uncivilised worldly revelry. Priests, teachers and other men of letters, together with the leaders of public life in villages and towns, set out on the road of no return to Siberia. They imposed huge debts, which almost no one could pay, and took the people’s wealth, and those who resisted were thrown into dungeons or shot. They taught the young to mock the Church, faith and all that is holy. In a word, they tried to drive God out of people’s souls and close heaven to them.
But they had no time to accomplish their work. God could no longer bear them. Too much spilled innocent blood cried out to Heaven. Before a year had passed since their raid, the great and holy war against the Bolsheviks, the war for the Cross of Christ and for the ancestral land, was waged and the enemy was driven out of the country by the bravery of our soldiers.
The Bolsheviks left great devastation and pain in their wake. In their hasty and desperate retreat they set fire to towns and villages, wounded and killed people, and left so many orphaned and homeless.
All of them lacked a warm word of encouragement and comfort. That is why, after our victorious army, led with such skill and wisdom by Marshal Ion Antonescu, we, the Vlachs of Ardeal, led by H.P.S. Nicolae of Transylvania, together with 53 other priests and deacons…
We from the diocese of Oradea, 12 of us, went to the county of Soroca, on the banks of the Dniester. Each of us went to his own county. There we divided ourselves into groups of three and began to go out every day, before and after lunch, to the villages and towns, to celebrate holy liturgies, doxologies, etc., and to preach.
In this way we visited almost 100 towns, villages and hamlets, we in the diocese of Oradea alone, and all together more than 600 villages…” etc.
The same thing is recounted by His Grace Bishop Nicolae Popovici of Oradea in his address to the members of the Eparchial Assembly in 1942, with a wealth of details, trying to justify the legitimacy of the war against the Soviet Union (see the official organ of the Diocese of Oradea, “Romanian Law, No. 12 of 15 June 1942: Speech of His Grace Bishop Nicolae at the opening of the Eparchial Assembly of June 1942).
His Grace Nicolae Popovici, Bishop of Great Oradea,
Volunteer at the front in Transnistria, Ukraine and Crimea
His Eminence Nicolae Popovici felt that the journey of the Archpriests of the Ardennes and the 53 priests in September 1941 was not enough, and he was probably not satisfied with the fruits of this mission. In his aforementioned speech of 1942 to the members of the Eparchial Assembly, he spoke with particular passion about the foreign mission of the Orthodox Church in support of the war against the Soviet Union. In accordance with this conviction, he tried to respond to Marshal Antonescu’s call for volunteers for the Russian front and, with address no. 2884/942 to the Chief of the General Staff, His Eminence Nicolae Popovici, he asked to be accepted, together with three other companions, as a volunteer for the front. We quote the content of this request:
“Following the impulses of our Romanian and Christian conscience, we wish to worship at the altar of the homeland, in these times of the greatest tension of the nation, in addition to the missionary activity of the diocese, the service of preaching, consolation and fortification of the soul of our beloved soldiers at the front and in the field hospitals.
We therefore ask you, General, to authorise and make the necessary arrangements for us to be absent from the diocese for one month, as long as our official duties permit, so that we can bring to our dear soldiers, together with the proclamation of the Divine Word, the strength and light from above of the sacred services which they so much need in the moments of great danger which they have to pass through from day to day.
We will be accompanied by: Protopriest Aurel Mușat from Ceica-Bihor, Protopriest Cornel Sava from Beiuș and Deacon Aurel Daraban, Eparchial Secretary. The trip is planned for July and the beginning of August.
While we await your reply, we ask you to accept, General, with the Archbishop’s blessing, the assurance of our highest consideration”.
To this address His Holiness received the following affirmative telegraphic reply:
“Regarding No. 2884/942, I have the honour to inform Your Holiness that the Grand Staff has approved what you have planned for the troops in Transnistria and has given instructions to this effect to the Army Command in Tiraspol. The trip can take place after 10 July. Please let us know when you intend to be in Tiraspol so that we can inform the local military authorities.
Chief of the General Staff
General N. Tătăranu
Telegram No. 301015/3 July 1942″.
On 9 July 1942, Fr. Nicolae Popovici left for Bucharest, where he was received in audience by the Presidency of the Council, the Patronage Committee, the Ministry of National Defence, the General Staff and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, where “the high authorities welcomed with great satisfaction the voluntary decision of His Holiness to go to the front in the midst of our army and the Christian mission, and wished him a fruitful and illuminating activity on this path, which in these times is not trodden by a vicar. Thus he will mark the beginning of the mission of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the East, liberated from the Bolshevik tyranny (see “Romanian Law” 17/943, p. 152).
In the official organ of the diocese of Oradea, “Romanian Law”, the journey of Fr. Nicolae Popovici and the other volunteers to Transnistria, Ukraine and Crimea, to the city of Kerci, where Colonel Constantin Rădulescu, commander of an infantry regiment on the island of Kerci, greeted the volunteers with the following words
“For the soldiers of the King and the Marshal, who roam the lands from which, hundreds of years ago, the Tartars swept in foaming waves, pouring with fury on the Moldavia of Stephen the Great and Holy, the presence of Your Holiness symbolises the testimony of the bond that exists between the Church and the army, and of our longing to regain what remains detached from the body of our dear homeland. ….
Your P.S. descended among the soldiers to bless them, to strengthen their faith in God’s victory over Satan, and finally to make each soldier more and more confident in the settlement of Romania, in its just borders, marked with blood shed in abundance on all our plains, valleys, hills and mountains…
With this faith that moves every obstacle, even the mountains out of place, for justice, for a new Romania, great and peaceful in its borders”.
These were the echoes of the words of Father Nicolae Popovici, spoken in front of the 31 military units, in the 20 field hospitals, in the tributes in the 16 heroes’ cemeteries, in the consecration of churches, in the troiques, in the consecration of water, in the vespers and polyphonies, in the 78 sermons and speeches (see “Romanian Law”, no. 17/942, p. 150).
This is confirmed by His Holiness himself, in his pastoral letter to the clergy and faithful of his diocese, on the occasion of Christmas in December 1942, when he asks for the help of the faithful for the construction of an orphanage in Beiuș, where the orphaned children of the heroes of his diocese, who died on the battlefield in the war against the Soviet Union, would be cared for (see the Christmas pastoral letter with no. 4930/942).
Nicolae Popovici for the construction of this orphanage is also repeated in the Pastoral Letter for Easter 1943 (see nos. 1540/943), when he exhorts the faithful to “give your oblation with a good heart for the orphanage where the orphans of our Holy War will be sheltered and educated…”.
Although the construction of the orphanage in Beiuș had already begun, which could have brought gratitude to His Eminence Bishop Nicolae Popovici, as His Eminence also testifies in his Pastoral Letter no. 5500/1943, given to the clergy and faithful of his diocese on the occasion of Christmas 1943 and New Year 1944, but the defeat of Hitler’s armies and the return of the front to the places where His Holiness and the Archbishops of Transylvania had blessed and encouraged the soldiers in battle, led him to urge the faithful to pray earnestly for the protection of the soldiers and the country against the enemy of the invaders. We quote some passages from this pastoral:
“My beloved,
On this occasion, I would like to take to heart some Christian and Romanian exhortations. During these holy days, pray with all the fervour of your soul for our dear soldiers who, now for the third time, are facing the harsh frost of winter, standing firm on the battlefields in the rain of the enemy’s murderous bullets, for the defence of the fatherland and the nation. Ask the Heavenly Father, through His holy angels, to keep them forever in His almighty protection, to protect them from all evil and to return them to their homes healthy and victorious…
Pray with many sighs from the depths of your hearts for our brothers who are in foreign and bitter bondage, for the undaunted strength of their Christian faith, for the increase of their long and hard-won patience, for their unshakable hope in the coming hour of justice and Romanian freedom…”.
When the front reached the Tatras and beyond the Tisa, Father Nicolae Popovici, rebuked by his conscience, tried to atone. He went alone to the Tatra front to encourage the soldiers against the German invaders. Ahead of him, however, were the soldiers who had once been advised and encouraged by His Holiness on the Russian fronts. They were the volunteers of the Tudor Vladimirescu Division, who recognised him and, with all due respect to a clerical face, invited him to leave the front, since His Holiness’s place was no longer with the liberating armies. His Holiness returned to his residence, without the publicity he had so generously given when he had volunteered to go to the front in Transnistria, Ukraine and Crimea…
When the storm had passed, and with it the reproaches of conscience, Bishop Nicolae Popovici, although he had been part of the delegation that accompanied His Eminence Patriarch Nicodemus to Moscow, as a trusted man of Prime Minister Dr. Petru Groza, did not miss the opportunity to show that he was controlled by the same feelings that had twice led him to go to the Russian front. At the Synod of 10 December 1946, Fr. Nicolae Popovici refused to accompany the Archbishops of the Old Kingdom, headed by the Patriarch of the Country, on the occasion of their visit to the Parliament that had emerged from the elections of 19 November 1946. On the contrary, His Holiness accompanied the group of Transylvanian hierarchs, led by Metropolitan Bălan, with whom he had once gone to the front in Basarabia and Transnistria, and refused to give his blessing to the new Parliament.
(ANIC, CC of the Communist Party of Romania – Administrative-Political Section, file 87/1955, f. 41-48. Document reproduced in The Courage to Speak: Bishop Nicolae Popovici of Oradea, edited by George Enache and Adrian Nicolae Petcu, Partener Publishing House, Galati, 2009, pp. 112-120).
[1] This note, probably written by a member of the Church, should be understood in the reverse perspective of denunciation, like most of the informative notes given to the Securitate. It is noteworthy that Bishop Nicolae is, from the outset, accused of the most infamous stigma of the time, that of being a legionnaire, an accusation that was in itself sufficient proof of guilt and thus a cover-up of religious persecution under a political pretext. Throughout the document, we will see that, in the same blinkered way, the brave Vlaard’s anti-communism is translated into “legionnaireism”, as the martyred professor Teodor M. Popescu would suffer a few years later.