Monk Felix Dubneac – “a welcoming, discreet and long-suffering man”
At the beginning of the third millennium, together with a Moldavian Neo-Austrian monk, Archimandrite Vitalie Danciu, we travelled to the North American continent, arriving one day at the Monastery of the Assumption in Rives Junction, Michigan. The monastery complex was strikingly similar to those in the country, I would say, with groves and fairytale glades, an hour and a half away from the big city of Detroit, where many Romanians live.
Long before I went to the United States, I had heard a lot about this convent, where the nun Benedicta Braga had worked diligently and wisely, trained in the convent of Văratec, which she had left in the 1970s, not without regrets, but taking with her the tradition of an order that had been grafted far away from the country by the mission of a group of Romanian prayerful people in a place that seemed to have been transferred, as if by a miracle, from the Carpathians to the American state of Michigan. […]
I had the impression of being in a place I had known for a long time, familiar, with hospitable people and a fatherly spirit. Mother Benedicta and her two fathers, Roman Braga and Felix Dubneac, of Bessarabian origin, dominated the community with their words, their looks, their age and their spirituality.
Father Roman told us about the place where we were, about the Romanian mission in this area, about aspects of which we knew almost nothing. Mother Benedicta and Archimandrite Felix shone through their silence. They both carried the burden of the years, both over 80, or at least one of them, who wanted to know something about the country, about their brothers, over whom the years and the hard times had passed.
Father Felix resignedly carried a heavy cross. He was confined to a wheelchair. He had come to America in 1968. His life had seen many exile and deprivations of freedom. Born near Soroca in 1912, he was part of a group of Bessarabian monks who fled to Romania because of communist persecution. He lived in several monasteries, serving at the sacred altar and, in his spare time, painting icons or writing down his sublime thoughts and experiences. In the Cernica monastery he attended the monastic seminary for eight years and then the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest. Among his fellow students were the Blessed Patriarch Teoctist, Archbishops Gherasim Cristea and Eftimie Luca, and Archimandrites Sofian Boghiu and Grigorie Băbuș.
Towards the end of his life, after many years of estrangement, he met his former colleague, Patriarch Teoctist, in Canada, about whom he recounted with great joy precious memories of their youth. Archimandrite Sofian Boghiu, in an interview published in “Vestitorul Ortodoxiei Românești” in June 1996, confesses: “In June 1958, we who were active in the Burning Bush were arrested. I was in the monastery of Ghighiu, near Ploiești, on scaffolding with a group of monks and brothers who were painting frescoes in the church of the monastery cemetery. I was arrested together with Father Felix Dubneac, also a member of the Burning Bush. The investigation took several months. It wasn’t until the trial before the military tribunal that we found out that we were 16 prisoners, part of the Burning Bush organisation…”.
Archimandrite Felix Dubneac did not talk to us about this important aspect of his life. As I told you, he had shown exemplary discretion during the meeting with us. Fr. Sofian Boghiu, the well-known theologian Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Archimandrite Benedict Ghiuș, Fr. Daniil Sandu Tudor, Alexandru Mironescu, Fr. Adrian Făgețeanu and others.
Several years of harsh imprisonment, investigation after investigation, deprivation, threats and slanderous accusations followed. He was pardoned in 1964 and served only six of the 16 years to which he had originally been sentenced. With the help of Patriarch Justinian, he managed to leave the country in 1968 and settled in the USA, where he worked as a missionary in several Romanian communities. He spent almost 20 years as secretary of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in the USA and Canada, and was a close friend and collaborator of Archbishop Victorin Ursache.
Archimandrite Felix Dubneac also distinguished himself as an iconographer. In addition to painting churches in Romania, he has adorned many places in the United States and Canada, and among his most important pictorial works is the large fresco depicting the history of Romania in the Romanian Room at Detroit State University. Father Felix Dubneac also received from God the desire to write. He published numerous articles in the two almanacs “Credința” and “Solia” of the two Romanian dioceses in the United States and Canada. Many of them were collected in several books he published during his 40 years abroad. Archimandrite Felix Dubneac was a beloved and good monk, a worker of prayer and good deeds. A hospitable, discreet and patient man. I was reminded of him one evening as I leafed through one of the books he gave me.
(Archim. Timotei Aioanei – Ziarul Lumina)