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The Apostolic Nunciature in Romania
at the Beginning of the Communist Regime
1945-1950*
Cristian Vasile,
“Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History,
Bucharest
My paper analyses
the activity of the Apostolic Nunciature in Romania with a special attention to
the Italian representatives of the Holy See in Bucharest, and to Romanian
Italian prelates and clergymen between 1945 and 1950, pre-eminently in the
lights of the Romanian Secret Services’ documents. Therefore, this study does
not aim at providing a complete chronological and theoretical account of the
period. It may be useful in the following introductory paragraph to sketch some
of the general features of the diplomatic relations between the Holy See and
Central and Eastern European countries from the Soviet-controlled area
immediately after World War II.
For the Soviets, the Roman
Catholic Church was an “international organization”, while the Holy See was an
important ally of the American “imperialist”, facts which were unacceptable in
their eyes. The Communist governments from Eastern and Central Europe sought to
restrain and then even to suppress the communications between the Holy See and
local Catholics, therefore the activity of the Apostolic Nunciatures from these
countries began to be closely supervised even as early as 1945. In Albania the
Holy See’s representatives were accused of collaboration with the Fascist occupiers and were
unscrupulously driven away immediately after 1944[1].
The Holy See continued after 1944 to recognize the legal Polish authorities
which remained in exile in London[2],
but the Communist government from Warsaw treated more carefully the Polish
Roman Catholic Church in comparison with their Central European neighbor
“comrades”. Nevertheless, the Concordat was denounced by the Polish authorities
in September 1945[3]. Although in
Romania the Concordat - which had been ratified in 1929 - was unilaterally
revoked only three years later on July 17, 1948, it was many times infringed
and avoided after the Communist takeover in March 1945.
For the Communists the
Romanian Catholic priests (they had about three milion faithful at that time)
proved to be more hostile in comparison with the other clergy (Orthodox,
Protestant etc). The Holy See maintained after the World War II the
denunciation of the Communist ideology and, thus, under the influence of this
decision[18], the
Catholic Church in Romania (all of its rites: Latin, Byzantine and Armenian) as
well as the other sister Churches from Central and Eastern Europe, forbade the
adhesion of the subordinate clergymen to the Communist Parties and
organizations[19]. Thus, the
Roman
p. 258
Catholic Church did not give its blessing to the Communist regime, and
this hostile attitude was accompanied by the support of some subordinate laymen
groups - the Association of the Greek Catholic Romanians (AGRU) and the
Association of the Romanian Greek Catholic Students (ASTRU)[20]
- in favour of the anticommunist oppositionn. Moreover, the Secret Service’s
report noted on March 1, 1946 that ASTRU (organization which supported actively
the Prayer’s Front) received through
the agency of msgr. Vladimir Ghika “a substantial subsidy” from the Apostolic
Nunciature. Thanks to this fact, Andrea Cassulo was very interested in the
activities of ASTRU, concluded the SSI report[21].
In reply, the Communist appealed to obedient organizations and even the small
Catholic Italian community in Romania did not escape from the state
authorities’ pressure which pleaded for “enlisting” in the Communist or
pro-Communist associations. Among the major figures of the Romanian Italian
community was Antonio Mantica who came in Romania in July 1913 sent by the
Vatican, but approved and paid by the Italian government as priest of the
Italian Catholics of Bucharest. He belonged to the diocese of Vicenza and was
for a few years missionary in Sudan[22];
he remained for three decades priest of the Italian church of SS. Redentore in Bucharest[23].
After their takeover the Romanian Communists encouraged the foundation and
development of the Italian Patriotic
Union[24], an
obedient organization which had the aim of dividing the Romanian Italian
colony. Faced with this attempt of penetrating the Italian community, the
Apostolic Nunciature decided to intervene and actively supported the creation
of a rival association – the Catholic
Italian Group, animated by padre Antonio Mantica, the priest of the Italian
parish of Bucharest[25].
This Group received an significant
support from the Italian Legation and from important members of the Italian
colony in Romania: Valerio Ongari, Giovanni Villa and Umberto Ricordini[26].
Probably, the Romanian Communists perfidiously relied on a religious feud, as well. For instance, in Southern Bukovina the German and Hungarian Catholic population had left in 1940 and after 1944 its Catholic churches were occupied by the Orthodox faithful. The authorities had allowed Orthodox to use the Catholic churches but they deliberately neglected the property right of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Iaşi. Andrea Cassulo was concerned that the Communists might ignore sine die the Catholic properties, so he pleaded for the recognition of the property rights of the Roman Catholic Bishopric of Iaşi.
But the authorities tried to
speculate every discord even within Roman Catholic Church. Some documents spoke
about alleged Romanian Greek Catholic bishops’ pressures on Andrea Cassulo
after 1944 for punishing mgr Aron Marton, the Romanian Hungarian bishop of Alba
Iulia who was accused for his attempts to convert the Transylvanian Greek
p. 259
Catholics to Roman Catholicism during the World War
II[27].
The nuncio, “a good friend of the Hungarian prelate from Alba Iulia” – as
insinuated by the SSI - refused to make a decision alone and sent the case to
Vatican for a resolution. However, it goes without saying that such information
must be confirmed by other sources because now we hold also favorable Greek
Catholic opinions on Aron Marton.
The Romanian officials just
like their Soviet masters estimated that the Apostolic Nunciature in Bucharest
was a sort of Intelligence Agency (or even Espionage
Department of the Vatican in the Communist speech). For example, a leading
Romanian Italian clergy exponent after 1944 – msgr. Andrea Iovanelli - was
blamed in the spring of 1946 by the SSI for organizing an ecclesiastical,
political and social Intelligence Department. According to the SSI agents, the
headquarters of this “Department” was right at the Apostolic Nunciature led by
an other Italian – Andrea Cassulo[28].
The Catholic priests were frequently charged for using espionage channels.
After Andrea Cassulo’s departure the Secret Services blamed Gerald Patrick
O’Hara and his colleagues Guido del Mestri and John C. Kirk for the
continuation of the “spying activity”[29].
Such accusations were repeated in a shameful booklet entitled Vatican – a meanly tool of the warmongers,
edited by the Romanian Workers’ Party[30]
Publishing House which stated that “the Roman pope has in its service an entire
network of agents – Catholic priests and missionaries whose job is to spy and
to send regularly reports to the Vatican […]. The Vatican became the most
important center of espionage and spying training from the entire world”[31].
Therefore, many clergy were injailed especially from the beginning of the
summer of 1947.
Moreover, the problem of the numerous arrested priests and the precarious state of the Catholic Church were the main topics of the discussion from December, 1947 between bishop Gerald Patrick O’Hara and representatives of the Romanian government. At the end of the meeting, O’Hara did not obtain much, and he declared openly that the real truth was hidden. It is clear that the Groza government began to promote a more rigid religious policy after September 1947 and its main objective was the subordination of all Churches, the last obstacle for the Romanian Communists after the suppression of the democratic opposition and abolition of the monarchy. So, 1948, a year dominated by the East-West confrontation, brought a fundamental change in the religious policy. On February 22, 1948 a provocative Communist attack on the Catholic Church took place: in a vehement speech the Communist leader Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej enunciated the anti-Catholic policy. Shortly after, the contact between the Catholic Church from Romania and the Holy See was effectively cut off under Article 40 from the Law concerning the Religious Cults, adopted on August 4, which stated that no religious community and none of its officials may have relations with
p. 260
religious communities abroad, except with permission of the Ministry of Religious Cults and through the Ministry of External Affairs[32].
Through the agency of the Apostolic Nunciature in Bucharest the Holy See vehemently protested in 1948-1949 against the suppression of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church and condemned the violation of the religious freedom, but the Communist authorities (especially the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) decisively rejected these justified accusations as “interferences” in the internal affairs of a sovereign and independent state[33]. Moreover, repeatedly the Romanian Communists infringed the elementary diplomatic practices and conventions: they illegally denounced the Concordat and in May 1949 the diplomats’ freedom of movement was drastically restricted[34].
On December 27, 1949 padre
Antonio Mantica was summoned at the Ministry of Interior headquarters where he
was practically arrested for 5 days. After psychic and physical pressures he
accepted to declare publicly that he would leave “spontaneously” the country
and not after an expulsion decree[35].
He left Romania on February 7, 1950 and after his expulsion the Italian church S.S. Redentore remained without a
priest. The internuncio O’Hara and Scammacca del Murgo, the Italian ambassador
in Romania, asked father Clemente Gatti whether he accepted to be the priest of
the Italian colony in Bucharest. He was enthroned on February 11, 1950 but he
did not have the title of parish priest. After the banishment of the Apostolic
Nunciature’s diplomats[36],
Clemente Gatti also received, on January 1, 1951 an order of expulsion without
any motivation. Although the Italian Legation obtained a postponement, on March
3, 1951 the Italian Ministry of External Affairs gave clear instructions to its
Legation from Bucharest to demand to Clemente Gatti to leave Romania immediately[37].
Since padre Clemente Gatti refused to obey, he was arrested on March 8, 1951.
As Pedro Ramet stated, for
Marxists, religious policy and nationalities policy were parts of an organic
whole[38].
After 1948 a furious anti-Western campaign was unleashed in Eastern and Central
Europe, whose aim was to destroy the Western cultural values perceived as
decadent and depraved: British, French and Italian Institutes and Libraries
were closed by the Communist governments and the citizens of Western background
(French, Italian, German etc) suffered, too. Thus, the fate of the Italian and
Romanian Italian clergy is not surprising.
*
As we saw the Soviets and
their obedient Romanian Communists imitators considered that the Vatican policy
was enslaved by the warmonger American “imperialist”
p. 261
establishment and as a proof they invoked the
nomination of American apostolic nuncios in Eastern Europe: Gerald Patrick
O’Hara in Romania and Patrick Hurley in Yugoslavia[39].
In this anti-Catholic and suffocating climate Andrea Cassulo’s successor Gerald
Patrick O’Hara was forced to leave Bucharest on July 7, 1950[40].
He was practically expelled. It is obvious that after 1945 the Holy See tried
to counteract the Soviet anti-Catholic policy but we believe that it is an
exaggeration to assert that the Vatican could “exert pressure” on Romanian
Orthodox Church hierarchy for religious union with Rome, as some historians
recently stated[41].
The Holy See’s diplomats in
Romania were even since 1945 the object of a strong distrust because the
pro-Communist government began to consider the Vatican as a “bulwark against Communism”. The
ideological clash between the Roman Catholic Church and the state had important
political consequences. The Communists interpreted the lack of political
support of the Catholic Church as forbidding Catholic priests to engage in the
“democratic” policy and therefore the Catholic clergy were labeled
“reactionary” and “imperialist” like their “masters” from the Vatican, and
especially after 1948 they have been charged with collaboration with the
American and Vatican spies, and they spent years in Communist prisons. In
recent years researchers have gained acces to new archival materials which
revealed the brutality and the persecutions against the Romanian Catholic
clergy of all rites.
At the same time the
Communist Eastern and Central European Parties tried to convince their Roman
Catholic Churches to break the canonical links with the Vatican and to
transform them into “National Churches”. These attempts, a prelude to a future subordination,
were firmly rejected by the Catholic hierarchy. The Communist intentions were
rapidly deciphered by the Catholic prelates and representatives of the Vatican
in Eastern and Central Europe. For example, early in the winter of 1946, Andrea
Cassulo was aware of the fact that “the Soviet government has in its view,
trough the agency of a skilful action, the creation of dissident Polish Roman
Catholic Church which will break its ties with the Vatican and will become, for
form’s sake, an autonomous Catholic Church, but in fact a Russian Patriarchy’s
subordinate”[42].
Unfortunately for the Roman Catholic Church, the Western allies recognized the
Soviet Union’s claims to pre-eminent influence in Eastern and Central Europe,
thus the Holy See had no possibility to intervene in this part of the
continent.
For this material, permission is granted
for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and
personal use.
Whether you intend to utilize it in
scientific purposes, indicate the source: either this web address or the Annuario.
Istituto Romeno di cultura e ricerca umanistica 4 (2002), edited by Şerban
Marin, Rudolf Dinu and Ion Bulei, Venice, 2002
No permission is granted for commercial
use.
© Şerban Marin, August 2002, Bucharest,
Romania
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* Although the
responsibility for the contents of the paper is entirely mine, I owe much to
the support of colleagues and friends. Among those to whom I am especially
indebted for their effort to facilitate the access to many sources are Oana
Seceleanu, Violeta Barbu, Alexander Drace-Francis and, not least, Maria Pakucs.
[1] Other sources
assert that another apostolic delegate Francisc Gisni was shot in 1948 by the
Albanian secret police (Arhiva Serviciului Român de Informaţii - Archive of the
Romanian Information Service, hereafter ASRI, fond D, dosar 2325: 186).
[2] Hansjakob Stehle, Eastern Politics of the Vatican 1917-1979 (translated by Sandra Smith), Athens, Ohio-London: Ohio University Press, 1981:
251. See also O. Halecki, A History of Poland, London-Henley:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1978]: 329.
[3] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2325: 525
[4] Especially the
archimandrites Teodosie Bonteanu and Daniil Ciubotaru (Ibid., dosar 2322: 45; Ibidem,
dosar 2325: 16).
[5] Michel de Galzain, Une Âme de Feu. Monseigneur Vladimir Ghika, d’après les
documents réunis par Mgr Bârlea,
préface de Son Éminence Le Cardinal Feltin,
Archevêque de Paris, Paris: Beauchesne, 1961: 128.
[6] Burton Y. Berry, Romanian Diaries 1944-1947 (ed. by Cornelia Bodea), Iaşi-Oxford-Portland: The Center for Romanian
Studies, 2000: 72.
[7] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2324: 12.
[8] Ibidem..
[9] Ibidem: 304
[10] Arhivele
Naţionale Istorice Centrale – Central Historical National Archives (hereafter
ANIC), fond Direcţia Generală a Poliţiei, dosar 75/1946: 31.
[11] Ibidem: 1.
[12] Procesul mareşalului Antonescu. Documente,
vol.1, edited by Marcel-Dumitru Ciucă,
Bucharest: Saeculum I. O., Europa Nova, 1995: 186. Andrea Cassulo was accused
for his alleged wartime favourable attitude toward the Antonescu’s Fascist
regime.
[13] Ioan Marius Bucur, “Consideraţii privind politica
religioasă a guvernului Groza, 1945-1947”, in Anul 1947 – căderea cortinei. Comunicări prezentate la Simpozionul de
la Sighetu Marmaţiei (20-22 iunie 1997), (ed. by Romulus Rusan), Bucharest: Fundaţia Academia
Civică, 1997: 348-349.
[14] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2322: 9. Msgr. Gerald Patrick O’Hara came in Romania in November 1946
after a deliberate delay provoked by the Allied (Soviet) Commission for
Execution of the Armistice (Ibidem,
dosar 2541: 1).
[15] Ibidem, dosar 2324: 190.
[16] He visited many
times the Romanian “reactionary” diplomat Ion Condurachi who was his friend
(they met first time in Egipt) (Author’s interview with Oana Seceleanu, October
19, 2001).
[17] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2541: 137.
[18] Bucur, op.cit: 346.
[19] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2322: 65; see also Cristian Vasile,
“Biserica Română Unită după 1944”, in 22,
X, no. 14 (476), April 6-12, 1999: 10.
[20] Both identified
by the Romanian Secret Police (the Siguranţa)
with Catholic Action (ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2541: 123).
[21] Ibid., dosar 2324: 34; Ibid., dosar 2322: 8.
[22] Raymond Netzhammer, Arhiepiscop în România. Jurnal de război 1914-1918 (ed. by Ion Dumitriu-Snagov), Bucharest, 1993: 34.
[23] Francesco Molinari M.S., Padre Clemente Gatti o.f.m. Mons. Vladimiro Ghika. Eroi della fede in
Romania, Bucharest: UCEREC: 12. The small Catholic community in Bucharest
consisted of ethnic Italians, French, Germans, Hungarians, Romanians etc.
However, it is not true that all
Roman Catholics from Romania “were Hungarians or Germans” as Hansjakob Stehle
stated (see Stehle, op.cit.: 264). In Bucharest and Western
Moldavia there were many Latin-rite Catholic Romanians.
[24] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2324: 18.
[25] Ibidem, dosar 2541: 76.
[26] Ibidem.
[27] Ibidem, dosar 2327: 101.
[28] Ibidem, dosar 2324: 94. Later, Andrea
Traian Iovanelli, who was a kind of substitutus
episcopus for the Latin Archdiocese of Bucharest, will collaborate with the
Communist regime (probably after moral pressures) and will be excommunicated by
the Holy See (Author’s interview with Oana Seceleanu, October 19, 2001; see
also Stehle, op.cit.: 267).
[29] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2541: 1-2.
[30] The new name of
the Romanian Communist Party after February 21, 1948.
[31] Vaticanul, unealtă josnică a aţâţătorilor la
război, [Bucharest]: Editura Partidului Muncitoresc Român, 1950: 14-15.
[32] Monitorul Oficial, CXVI, No. 178, Part I
A, Wednesday, August 4, 1948: 6394; see also Janice Broun, “The Latin-Rite Roman Catholic Church of Romania”, in Religion in Communist Lands, vol.12, no.
1, Spring 1984: 168.
[33] Arhivele
Ministerului Afacerilor Externe din România - Romanian External Affairs
Ministry Archives (hereafter AMAE), fond Vatican, dosar 220, without number of
the page; see also Ibidem, Problema
217/1948-1950, without number of the page.
[34] Ibidem (nota verbală nr. 5295/1949).
[35] Molinari, op.cit.: 12.
[36] Guido del Mestri
(secretary and later auditor of the
Apostolic Nunciature) was accused, in a trial that was staged against the
Nunciature’s chauffeur Nicolae Popescu, of changing his priest’s cloathes with
civilian ones for more efficient “spy actions” (see AMAE, fond Vatican, dosar
220, without number of the page).
[37] Molinari, op.cit.: 20.
[38] Pedro Ramet, Cross and Commissar. The Politics of Religion in Eastern Europe and
USSR, Bloomington-Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1987: 38.
[39] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2327: 203; see also Giampaolo Mattei,
Il Cardinale Alojzije Stepinac. Una vita
eroica nella testimonianza di quanti con lui sono stati vittime della
persecuzione nella Jugoslavia communista, City of Vatican: L’Osservatore
Romano, 1999: 61, and Stehle, op.cit.: 260.
[40] La Santa Sede e la Romania. Documenti
diplomatici, [Rome]: Ambasciatta di Romania presso la Santa Sede e La
Librerie Editrice Vaticana, 2000: 220.
[41] See, for example
Cristina Păiuşan, "Politica patriarhilor României şi ,,colaboraţionismul” cu organele statului", in Anii
1949-1953, cit.: 112.
[42] ASRI, fond D,
dosar 2324: 60.