Fr. Vasile Pătrașcu (en)

Father Vasile Pătrașcu was my confessor. He is the man who has had the greatest influence on my relationship with the Church and with God. He was truly a man of extraordinary personality. It was from him that I first heard about the sanctity of the martyrs in the communist prisons. He told me how, in Pitești, someone who had seen in the Spirit saw the prison bathed in an unearthly light, thanks to the prayers of those inside, despite the most terrible tortures. He was a fighter, a tough man. He was able to read the Molitves of St […]

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I was born in January 1922 in the town of Bârlad, of Romanian Orthodox descent. I attended primary and secondary school in the town of Bârlad, then the Academy of Higher Economic Studies in Bucharest. I was arrested on 16 May 1948 and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour, then another 10 years’ hard labour for “subversive organisation”, being classified, like all political prisoners, under Law No. 209, “conspiracy against state security”. I passed through the following dungeons of “Bolshevik heaven”: the Ministry of the Interior twice, Jilava five times, Uranus, Pitești, Gherla, Aiud three times, Alba-Iulia, Galați several times, […]

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Father Vasile Pătrașcu died “like a tear of blood” in the middle of the 23rd of September 2006. We lost a confessor with much grace, loved, respected and sometimes feared for his firm orthodox attitude, but combined with great modesty and, above all, full of the spirit of Christian gentleness. Born in Bârlad on 1 January 1922, he studied economics and theology. A militant since his youth, he joined the Brotherhood of the Cross, then spent 18 years in prison, tortured constantly for his intransigence and uncompromising attitude, and then continued his fight for faith and nation as a priest […]

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