on the streets
of Bucharest
By Patrick Comerford
THE MAIN shopping streets of Bucharest are lined with elegant boutiques and
department stores, with fine restaurants, full banking services and even
casinos vying with each other. The elegance and prosperity in the heart of
Bucharest make this a pleasant European capital to visit, and stand in sharp
contrast to the visible prosperity when I first visited Romania in the months
immediately after the collapse of the Ceausescu regime, or the struggling
economy I witnessed when I returned during the 1996 election campaign.
Despite Ceausescu’s efforts to destroy much of Bucharest’s architectural heritage in the 1970s and 1980s, there are many elegant baroque and fin de sicele villas in the northern suburbs, and palaces and churches of historic significance in the city’s side streets. The former Royal Palace in Revolution Square was hosting an exhibition of religious art when I visited it a few weeks ago. In another former palace now housing the Bucharest History Museum there was an exhibition of seventeenth and eighteenth century icons and liturgical works of art.
Ceausescu hoped his garish, imposing “Palace of the People” on a hill on the southern side of the city, would dominate Bucharest for generations. After the Pentagon, this is the second largest building in the world. It epitomises the megalomania of a crazed dictator, but has found a new lease of life as the Parliament. On the top of a nearby hill, the Patriarchate has stood the test of time, with its ancient church and Salvonic crosses, and the large Antim Monastery witnessing to a faith that has bravely withstood the batterings of the centuries.
Discreet churches tucked into the city’s narrow streets kept their doors open despite decades of oppression and are living symbols of a faith that is alive. Close to Revolution Square, the Cretulescu Church is covered with scaffolding as work continues on restoring this eighteenth century gem built in the distinctive national genre created by Constantin Brancoveanu. It is high and narrow with mock arches, bricks laid in saw-toothed pattern, around the towers and elaborate carvings over the entrance. Inside, work continues on restoring the frescoes by Gheorghe Tatterscu.
Church of the Resurrection
Off the busy shopping street still bearing the name of General Magheru and
close to many of the capital’s embassies, the Church of the Resurrection
has a unique record as the only Anglican church in Eastern Europe that continued
to hold services from the time of its dedication in November 1922 until the
present day, with the, exception of four years during World War II – from
Christmas Day 1940 to Christmas Day 1944 – when Bucharest was occupied
by the Nazis.
Although there was an Anglican presence in the city from 1850 under the auspices of the Church’s Mission to the Jews (CMJ), the earliest records of the Anglican church in Bucharest date from the 1860s. With the appointment of the Rev Stewart Patterson as Chaplain of Bucharest and the Danube ports in 1896, the first sustained efforts were made to raise money to build a church. In December 1900, a piece of land was donated at the junction of Strada Pictor Verona and Strada Xenopol, close to the pleasant Gradina Icoanei (“The Park of the Icon”).
The foundation stone for the church was laid in 1913, but the outbreak of World War I disrupted the building programme. After the war, further donations came from the Bishop of Gibraltar and the Romanian royal family, and the first service in the new church was held on Easter Sunday, 4 April 1920. The early parish registers record the wedding of members of the royal household at the Cotroceni Palace, the arrival of persecuted Jews from in Russia, a collection in 1919 for Transylvanian orphans, a private visit to the church by King Michael, royal communicants, including Queen Sophia of Greece and Queen Marie of Yugoslavia, and a visit by members of Liverpool Football Club.
Regular members of the congregation included the Romanian Crown Princess Marie of Edinburgh, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Later, as Queen Marie, she became a member of the Romanian Orthodox Church. But she remained a communicant in the Anglican Church and after her death in 1938 a chalice and paten were donated in her memory. Her daughter, Princess Ileana (1909-1991), who as Mother Alexandra, founded the Orthodox monastery of the Transfiguration in Elide City, Pennsylvania, later wrote warmly about the influence of the Anglican Church in her formative years.
Rise of Ceausescu
With the outbreak of World War II, the Church of the Resurrection was closed
after the Christmas Day service in 1940, but reopened on Christmas Day 1944.
Despite the political turbulence in the years that followed, the church secured
a place in history as the only Anglican Church building to maintain a presence
in the Eastern Bloc throughout the post-war years of communism.
The chaplains in the 1960s included the Rev Dr David Hope, now Archbishop of York. Two significant events in 1965 shaped the future of Church life in Romania: Archbishop Michael Ramsey visited Patriarch Justinian, and Nicolae Ceausescu came to power as General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party. From1986 to 1989, the Rev Ian Sherwood, a former curate of the Saint Patrick’s Cathedral group in Dublin, was the Anglican chaplain in Bucharest, continuing to work through many of the difficult Ceausescu years.
Soon after Ian left for Istanbul, Ceausescu and his wife Elena were overthrown and executed. The revolution and turmoil during the Christmas period saw a tragic loss of life on the streets of Bucharest and church life was disrupted. According to parish records, 27 people attended Morning Prayer on 17 December 1989; the next entry is for 7 January 1990, when 18 people attended Morning Prayer – at great personal risk, three people turned up at the church on Christmas Day for the Christmas service and were shocked to find the church locked!
Today, the church is lively, and is seeking a new role for its witness and mission in Romania under the leadership of the current chaplain, the Rev James Ramsay, who moved to Bucharest in August 2002, and in partnership with the other churches in Romania.
Romanian Orthodox Church
With almost 19 million members, the Romanian Orthodox Church is the second
largest Orthodox Church in the world – smaller than the Russian Church
but nearly twice as big as the Church of Greece. Since the fall of Ceausescu,
the Romanian Orthodox Church has experienced a sustained growth. Last year,
there were 23 dioceses and 12,761 parishes, 373 monasteries and 181 sketes
with 3,368 monks and 4,661 nuns, and 12,173 priests and deacons. In Ireland,
the Romanian Orthodox Church is under the jurisdiction of Archbishop Joseph
Pop, based in Paris, and the Parish of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross,
meeting at Belvedere College Chapel in Dublin, is served by Father Calin
Matei Popovici.
Links between Anglicans and the Romanian Orthodox Church have prospered since the 1920s. A delegation of Anglican bishops and theologians visited Bucharest in 1935 for talks with Romanian Church leaders, and they agreed that “a solid basis had been prepared whereby full dogmatic agreement may be affirmed between the Anglican Church and Orthodox communions”.
Since then, the Romanian Orthodox Church was the only Orthodox Church to fully recognise the orders of Anglican clergy. Many chaplains in Bucharest have been invited to share in Orthodox liturgies, robing or joining the assembled clergy, reading the Gospel, and giving the address as part of the liturgy churches and cathedrals, while Orthodox Patriarchs, bishops and clergy have taken part in Anglican services in the Church of the Resurrection.
Today, Anglicans in Bucharest are concerned for the place that the Church of the Resurrection will have in Romania in the years to come. The Church of the Resurrection has developed close links with local Orthodox parishes, and at parish level they worship together and work together to relieve poverty.
Street poverty
In the immediate aftermath of the 1989 revolution, many Irish people and churches responded generously to the needs of Romanian children and orphanages. Perhaps an abiding image from at this time for many is of the children begging on the streets, many of them even forced to live in the sewers of Bucharest. Today, Romanian society faces new problems because of the continuing devaluation of the Romanian currency and spiralling inflation.
According to the President of Volksbank Romania, Mr Laurentiu Mitrache, the average income of working families is 3-4 million lei (€100) a month, leaving them unable to meet living costs, despite Romania’s low prices. Old people are on fixed pensions, which have not kept pace with inflation and have lost their spending power due to devaluation. We were told of a couple – a retired judge and a retired pharmacist – who are living on a monthly pension of €60, and of a former Energy Minister living on €40 a month.
Many old people, unable to pay their electricity and heating bills or buy enough food, have been forced to sell their apartments and move out. The new underclass in Romania are once-respectable old people forced out of their apartments and now a regular sight, quietly and humbly begging in streets, in the subways and on the steps of the Metro stations.
‘
A miracle of love’
With Robert Syme from Whitechurch Parish, I visited All Saints’ Church and parish, where Father Gheorghe Tudor has built an old people’s centre and started a project that includes three-storey sheltered housing and a food programme. The project, recently visited by Archbishop Hope, feeds up to 100 people three times a week, and a further 25 families receive food parcels with food donated by local restaurants. The sheltered housing will provide a new home for 20 old people on fixed pensions who have lost their apartments and short-term respite for old people who cannot afford to pay for their heating and lighting.
The new mortuary chapel serves the needs of old people whose flats are too
small for the traditional wake, and too hot during the summer months. Romanian
tradition demands burial within three days of death. The chapel interior
is decorated in traditional Orthodox style, and all the labour and craftsmanship
is the result of voluntary local labour. Father Gheorghe compared the megalomaniac
scale of Ceausescu’s “People’s Palace” with the human
scale of his project serving real people in need. “The closer you are
to people, the closer you are to God,” he told us.
James Ramsay, who has been impressed by Father Gheroghe’s determination, says: “The project is a sign of discipleship in Christ, a miracle of the love of God manifest in a particular parish: for others to contribute and share in this is a privilege, a calling to know more deeply the humility of Christ.”
Rev Patrick Comerford is Southern Regional Co-ordinator of the Church Mission Society Ireland (CMS Ireland). Contact: theology@ireland.com