Priest Palanca within the walls of the communist dungeon

I spent almost two months in the same cell with Father Iliescu-Palanca. He was the priest of the Stavropoleos Church in the centre of the capital. It is one of the most beautiful churches in the country. It was built in pure Byzantine style at the beginning of the Phanariot era, in 1724, by Archbishop Ioanichie. The priest Palanca, former director of the theological seminary of Curtea de Argeș, was a man of serious culture.

Among other things, he translated the “Sermons” of Elias Minat from ancient Greek. He said that he suffered at the Security Service and in Jilava more than the first Christians. He had a son, a final year medical student at the time of his arrest, and someone had told him that Virgil would be expelled because of his beliefs. He was very concerned about his son’s fate. At the time I was taken out of the cell, I left him seriously ill. He was no more than 50-55 years old. He had been involved in an espionage trial and had been convicted. When I later learned that he had died in prison, it was a day of mourning for all who knew him.

(Ion Antohe – Crucifixion in Romania after Yalta, Albatros Publishing House, Bucharest, 1995, pp. 287-288)