c. 1999 Religion News Service

BUCHAREST, Romania _ With his long white beard, lean face and probing hazel eyes, Nicolae Corneanu looks like he could have emerged from one of the Byzantine-style frescoes covering the walls of Orthodox churches across this beautiful yet haunted land.

Like many of his fellow Romanian Orthodox clerics, Corneanu made compromises with the former communist government of Nicolae Ceausescu. But unlike many, Corneanu has candidly admitted his former collaboration. Furthermore, he is widely acclaimed for a dramatic act of reconciliation in a country that has seen plenty of ethnic and religious strife since the violent ouster of Ceausescu 10 years ago this December.

Corneanu, the archbishop of the southwestern city of Timisoara, returned approximately 50 churches in his district to the minority Greek Catholic Church, whose buildings had been confiscated by the communists and turned over to the Orthodox. While Orthodox and Greek Catholics continue to battle over properties in other regions of Romania, Corneanu felt he had to shed a historical burden.”Those (Greek Catholic) churches are Christian churches, and it was normal to help each other,”Corneanu, 76, said in an interview with RNS in Bucharest earlier this year.”And politically speaking, the actions of the communist system needed to be repaired.” Greek Catholics consist of ethnic Romanians who use Orthodox-style liturgy but acknowledge the authority of the pope and embrace Catholic dogmas. The communist government banned the Greek church completely and imprisoned its bishops for life in 1948. Greek Catholics were forced to transfer their allegiances and church properties to the Orthodox church, though many refused and worshipped secretly.

With the return of religious liberties after 1989, Greek Catholics and Orthodox have fought, sometimes physically, over church buildings in the region of Transylvania, where most of Romania’s 650,000 Greek Catholics live.

In conjunction with Pope John Paul II’s ecumenical visit to Romania in May 1999, the Orthodox and Catholic churches formed a joint commission that is slowly working through these property claims. And the Orthodox church has officially apologized for”the evil endured”by Greek Catholics.

Corneanu’s district of Banat, around Timisoara, has a relatively tolerant and cosmopolitan atmosphere, laying the groundwork for his unilateral restitution of property. Even Corneanu says his action cannot serve as a model for Transylvania, where various ethnic and religious enemies need to negotiate through a history of fragmentation and suspicion.

The Romanian Orthodox Church, which today has about 20 million members, was notorious for its official collaboration with the communist regime.

After the revolution, its leaders acknowledged they often lacked the”courage of the martyrs”but they remain in power, including Patriarch Teoctist.

In a 1997 magazine interview, Corneanu himself admitted defrocking five dissident priests in 1981 under pressure from the secret police. The church rescinded all politically inspired punishments after the revolution.

Corneanu said the former communist government pressured the Orthodox church into collaboration, taking away its control of schools and hospitals and imprisoning dissident clerics. Despite all its collaboration, the Orthodox still suffered periodic waves of persecution, though none as severe as what Catholics and other religious groups endured.”The only activity allowed was inside the church,”Corneanu said.”The (Orthodox) church was pushed to make some compromises and collaborations with the communist system.” Catholics in Romania add that the communists poisoned the religious atmosphere.”Before the communist system, the Greek Catholics and the Orthodox had good relations,”said Tertulian Langa, the Greek Catholic vicar general for Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania.”The communists deserve all the blame because they used the policy of divide and conquer.” Roman Catholic spokeswoman Marina Fara credited Corneanu for helping bridge that divide with his restitution of property.

Corneanu’s conciliatory tone contrasts with that of Bishop Laszlo Tokes, a Protestant cleric who launched the Romanian revolution and who now is a champion of ethnic Hungarian separatism. Tokes was pastor of a Hungarian Reformed church in Timisoara in December 1989 when he courageously denounced the dictator Ceausescu.

(OPTIONAL TRIM BEGINS)

There was plenty to denounce. Ceausescu had created a fantastic cult of personality and built massive, useless public-works projects while citizens struggled to find adequate food and shelter.

When other communist governments such as East Germany’s and Czechoslovakia’s succumbed to relatively peaceful revolutions earlier in 1989, Ceausescu defiantly held on to power. Government forces came to arrest Tokes on Dec. 16, 1989, but ethnic Hungarians and Romanians massed in front of his church to defend him in a rare display of unity reflecting their shared disgust with Ceausescu.

The troops opened fire, but the protesters’ numbers swelled, and demonstrations spread to other cities. Ceausescu was overthrown, tried by a kangaroo court and executed.

Ceausescu’s most loyal supporters fought on for weeks afterward, even sniping from rooftops into homes, Corneanu recalled.

(OPTIONAL TRIM ENDS)”They were very difficult days,”the archbishop said.”A lot of people were arrested and a lot of people were shot by the troops. Very small children were killed.” In retrospect, the events appear to have been more of a coup than a revolution, with high-ranking communists seizing the initiative from street protesters. While the 1996 election of President Emil Constantinescu brought to power a government that had more distance from the communist past, residents and Western observers have become disillusioned by its failure to halt corruption and nepotism.

Tokes, meanwhile, now a bishop in the city of Oradea, has become a leader of ethnic Hungarian separatists, decrying the encroachment of the ethnic Romanian culture onto the nation’s 2 million Hungarians _ many living in that same cauldron of conflict, Transylvania.

For liberals who recall the multiethnic crowd that defended him that December night in Timisoara, Tokes has proved a disappointment. But Corneanu said he respects his fellow cleric.”We have friendship and we love each other,”Corneanu said. While noting many ethnic Hungarians do not share Tokes’s goal of full independence, Corneanu said Tokes is correct to insist that Hungarians”receive the rights that are given in all civilized countries and should not suffer discrimination.” As he does every year, Corneanu plans to attend commemorations for the revolution’s first victims at a Timisoara cemetery.”I consider everything that happened (in the revolution) was a miracle of God,”Corneanu said.”It also brings me happiness to see how Christian the Romanian people were in the time of the revolution. One of the slogans of the people was, `God is with us, God exists.’ This is a sign that the root of the protest against the communist system was the Christian faith.”DEA END SMITH