Monk Athanasius from the Petru Vodă Monastery
Alexandru Ștefănescu – Monk Atanasie – (born 1919), originally from the commune Orlea (Oroles-Vulturul), Romanați County, attends high school in the town of Corabia and is expelled for organising an FDC group. He comes from a family of legionaries, his father being an aide to General Cantacuzino. Since 1937, he was secretary to the county governor Alexandru Cristian Tell. He took part in the Uria camp, having worked more than 100 hours at the Gutenberg headquarters. At the County Chief’s suggestion, he is given the rank of Legionnaire.
After the assassination of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, he was ordered to re-establish contact with the capital. Hunted in Bucharest, he fled to Iași, where he was arrested and sentenced to two years and six months in prison. He was sent to the disciplinary prison in Chisinau, where he met Ovidiu Găină, Eugen Șăgoreanu, Dumitru Groza, Ilie Nițu, Lucian Caramlău, etc. He is released with the cession of Bessarabia.
He took part in the action of 3-6 September 1940 to overthrow King Carol II, in the group of the Bukovinians, together with Ovidiu Găină, Dumitru Leonteș, Hoinic, Totoescu. With the help of the commander George Macrin and the instructor Gheorghe Tudorache, he takes over the Casa Verde. Sent to Romanați County, he was appointed head of the sector. He was persecuted by Colonel Rioșanu, who was directly involved in the investigation in 1941, the year of his re-arrest, and was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour. He served his sentence in Aiud, one of the first political prisoners to be imprisoned there. Because he refused to renounce the Legionary Movement, he was taken to Zarca, where he remained until the Russians arrived. In the Aiud cell, he stayed with Dr. Uță and Constantin Dumitrescu – the Fakir. He was Dr. Uță’s right-hand man, helping him to treat sick prisoners and learning more from him than he would have in a medical school. The knowledge and medical practice he acquired in prison he used after his release, helping and comforting many sick people with great skill.
In 1948 he was released after a retrial. After his release, he returned to Aiud and worked on the memoirs of General Petrovicescu. He also helped the family of Coco Dumitrescu, Radu Gyr’s father, his wife and daughter. Arrested again in 1952 and taken to the canal, he worked on the construction site with engineer Nicola, his boss in the district. He passed through six camps. In Poarta Albă, he took part in the strike raid organised by the secret police to select those who were fit for action, and was again sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour. In 1956, he took part in the famous legionnaires’ strike in Aiud. When his re-education was resumed in Aiud, he was sent back to Zarca. He was released with the last batch in 1964. Together with the engineer Nicola, he began to organise a resistance network in Romanați County, with only the prisoners. In 1989 he was arrested and released twice more. In 1990, he made contact with Professor Mircea Nicolau, president of the “George Manu” Foundation in Bucharest, and took part in a series of meetings, conferences and book launches. He is the author of the volume Commentary on the monograph by Corabia. Audiatur et Altera Pars (Bacău, Babel Publishing House, 2003). In 2005, after the death of his wife, he entered monasticism as a monk Athanasius, at Petru-Vodă Monastery, under the guidance of Abbot Justin Pârvu.
At the monastery he devoted himself to the care of the sick, the monastery’s inhabitants and pilgrims. He will give an education of the highest quality to young people and children, who will love him especially. He will be remembered for his great capacity to love people, for his aristocratic dignity, for the sincerity and joy of his soul. He spent his last years in wonderful obedience and submission to Father Justin Pârvu, who was at the same time his brother in suffering and in prison, his friend, his confessor and his abbot.
One of his words was this: “In life we work with three categories of values: essential, important and secondary. The essential is faith and union with God, which give a person righteousness, balance and peace. Important are family and work. Secondary are the biological: reproduction, food, entertainment…” And he concludes bitterly: “The main problem is that people today live in the secondary…!”
Discernment, prudence, depth, clarity and renunciation characterise the profile of the monk Athanasius, a tireless worker for the army of Christ. His courageous attitude and his untiring commitment to Romanian Orthodoxy, throughout a life of bitter struggle against atheistic communism, found fulfilment in the monastic model, a mysterious vocation known only to God.
The acceptance of an inexorable destiny is the dominant feature of the entire generation of victims, as Mircea Vulcănescu so suggestively characterised the generation of ’27 – with its natural progeny – which took either the path of the communist dungeon or that of endless exile. The contact with Bădia Sandu Ștefănescu, as well as with other figures of the anti-communist resistance: Gheorghe Mihai, Gheorghe Stănescu, George Popescu Glogoveanu, Viorica Călinescu, Mircea Nicolau, Dr. Nae Nicolau, Pr. Liviu Brânzaș, Aspazia Oțel Petrescu, Constantin Emilian Bucescu and many others, gave me the happy opportunity to meet the true characters of deep Romania. They all embody the values of a world that communism tried to destroy and replace with a surrogate. Through their presence, these fundamental values of the Romanian soul – honour, honesty, courage, spiritual nobility, generosity, all in the expression of revealed truth – have been able to survive and even flourish where they have found fertile ground.
Therefore, we have a duty of conscience to continue the essential lesson of this generation, a lesson that is part of the natural course of the Romanian nation. Let us not forget to honour the memory of these martyrs, martyrs and saints of Romania, the only tickets to the universal final judgement. May God rest Nea Sandu Ștefănescu (Monk Athanasius) in the ranks of the righteous army, and may He enable all of us to carry forward with humility their gift, which is none other than that of righteous faith and the incessant witness of Christ!
(Constantin Mihai – Rost magazine n. 62, April 2008)