Alexandru Todea, seen as a symbol of Catholic resistance under Communism. Todea, who died last week at age 89, spend over 14 years in Communist prisons after refusing to give up his religion.
Before his funeral at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Blaj, 185 miles (about 300 kilometres) northwest of Bucharest, Pope John Paul II praised the Cardinal in a telegram for keeping his faith under the former "tyrannical regime," The Associated Press news agency reported.
Born in 1912 in a Transylvanian village, Todea studied theology in Rome and was ordained as a priest in 1939. After he received a Ph.D. in theology at a Catholic university, in Rome, he returned to Romania in 1940 where he wanted to be a priest and a teacher of Latin and Italian.
PRISON
However soon following World War Two, Todea’s ordeal started in 1946 when the communist regime, imprisoned hundreds of thousands of priests, intellectuals, peasants and politicians deemed to be "dangerous and impossible to convert to communist ideals."
Between 1946 and 1948, Todea was imprisoned and released five times by the Securitate, the feared communist secret police, according to church accounts. After his arrest in 1948, Todea escaped from prison and remained in hiding for three years and was made a bishop of the Eastern Rite Catholic Church.
His denomination, which was banned in 1948 by the Communists, follows the Eastern Orthodox ritual, but the church’s authority is in Rome, church experts say.
AMNESTY
Almost 90 percent of Romania’s 23 million people are Eastern Orthodox and about 1 percent are Eastern Rite Catholics. Todea was caught again in 1951 and sentenced to life in prison, but was released 12 years later, when communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej amnestied political prisoners.
After his release, Todea continued to fight for religious freedom, writing over 30 petitions to Communist authorities. At a secret meeting in 1986, the church’s bishops elected Todea leader of the church, giving him the rank of Metropolitan.
Following the bloody revolution that ended the regime in 1989, the church was recognized again. In 1990, the Pope confirmed Todea as the leader of the Romanian Eastern Rite Church and the Vatican gave Todea one year later the rank of cardinal. He could not enjoy his new position very long: Todea retired from the executive leadership of the church in 1992 after suffering a stroke.
