The attempts of the priest Dumitru Mitoiu, under the communist persecution
He was born in Dărmănești on 6 October 1916, when his father was killed at the front in the war for the reunification of the Romanian nation. In 1929, after finishing primary school, he won a scholarship to the “Patriarhul Miron” seminary in Câmpulung Muscel and continued his theological studies at the “Negru Vodă” seminary in Curtea de Argeș, from which he graduated in 1937.
He attended the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest, graduating in 1942. From 1938 he was the cantor of the parish of Balta Albă. In November 1942 he was ordained priest in the parish of Băcești, Roman County, where he served for a short time because he was concentrated, and then he experienced the hardships of the refugee camp in 1944. At the same time, in 1943, the young priest Mitoiu enrolled at the Faculty of Law and Philosophy in Iași, and in 1947 he graduated in law.
Because of his political choice during the National-Legionary government, he was arrested on the night of 14-15 May 1948 by the communist Securitate, together with other priests from Roman.
On 18 March 1949, by decree no. 335, Dumitru Mitoiu was sentenced by the Military Tribunal of Iași to 10 years’ imprisonment for “conspiracy against the social order”. He was investigated in Roman and Suceava prisons; in the latter he categorically refused the re-education that had just begun and was sent to Aiud prison.
Between 1950 and 1953, Father Dumitru worked in the prison’s factory, which was extremely hard work, as he recounts in his autobiography: “Here I was exhausted and when I came to my cell I dropped dead”. According to another witness, Father was “a thin-faced man of medium height, with a lively look in his eyes. There was only life in him. He was quick to anger, but also had a great love for people. He behaved with great dignity”.
His uprightness in prison cost him dearly: the guards forced him to spend a year in solitary confinement, where he contracted tuberculosis. For the same reason, after his release, the priest was placed under house arrest in the Brăila commune of Șcheia. He was forced to work on nearby farms.
A year later, Fr. Mitoiu was sent to the Culmea labour colony and, from April 1960, to Periprava. In Aiud he shared a cell with Radu Gyr and Nichifor Crainic, and in Culmea with his former theology teacher, Ion V. Georgescu.
Released on 12 September 1962, he had to work as an accountant, and only in June 1968 did he return to work as a priest in Vovriești, Vaslui county, and in Ciurea, Neamț county.
(Adrian Nicolae Petcu – Ziarul Lumina)