Serene, calm and warm-hearted face

Costică Dumitrescu[1], former Assistant to the Prahova County Chief, arrived in this TBC ward.

Following his behaviour, a true martyr, during the investigation in Ploiești, when he did not even give his name, an atmosphere of great respect and trust was created.

After all the suffering of so many bitter years in prison, I met him here again, with the same serene, calm and warm-hearted face that I had known 30 years before.

Uncompromising in his faith and kind in his speech, he lived a spiritual life full of grace, because immediately after his release he retired first to the monastery of Cernica and then to the monastery of Sihăstria, in the county of Neamț, where he became a monk and where he still lives today, as I write these lines, in the Spirit of the Lord, brought back by suffering.

(Nicu Popescu Vorkuta – Crez și adevăr, 2nd edition, Bucharest, 2009, p. 292)

1. Father Mark’s baptismal name was Constantine, hence the diminutive Costică. As for his surname, it is “Dumitru”, but in prison literature he is referred to as “Dumitrescu”.