The trial

My trial was short and forceful. I had a public defender who, at one point, discreetly told me that, because of events in Greece (there was fighting between the communists and the Greek government at the time), our legal classification, that of the crime of conspiracy against the social order, would be changed to that of murder and conspiracy against the social order, for which I would get 5 to 25 years instead of 1 to 7 years.

We knew this before the trial, because some people had arrived in Jilava before our trial, and for the same reasons for which they had been sentenced to 1 to 3 years’ imprisonment in the spring, they had now been sentenced to 5 to 10 years’ imprisonment in the autumn.

The reasons for the sentences were childish: failure to denounce or telling anti-Communist or anti-Stalinist jokes.

And in the autumn of 1952, when my public defender (but a man of heart) tried to prove at the trial that it was unfair to classify me as a criminal and an accomplice.

The President of the Military Tribunal Commission, General Petrescu, of sad memory, with a sign that was supposed to be discreet, made the lawyer change his attitude and started to accuse me.

I was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment with hard labour. A few years later, when I was in Aiud, I was told that, following an ex officio appeal, my final sentence was 15 years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(The complete writings of Blessed Elijah the Seer of God and his life, commented by his disciple and son in the Lord, Pr. Dr. Dorin Octavian Picioruș. Vol. I, Theology for Today, Bucharest, 2010, p. 279)