” “Restoring confiscated properties” “

“Restoring, according to a criterion of justice, confiscated church properties, so as to enable the Catholic Church to use such properties for the fulfilment of her mission”. The appeal was made by John Paul II, on receiving in recent days the new ambassador of Romania to the Holy See, Mihail Dobre. During the audience, the Pope touched on the thorny problem of the confiscation of ecclesiastical properties which is also having negative repercussions on the ecumenical rapprochement between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic church. We interviewed Bishop Virgil Bercea of Oradea Mare (Romania). What’s the situation in the country? “In 1948 the State confiscated all the properties of the Catholic Church and gave them to the Orthodox Church. In that year, the Catholic Church had 2,588 churches in Romania. So far it has managed to recover about a hundred of them. Ever since the early 1990s the Holy Father has repeatedly pressed for the restitution of expropriated church property. At the time we believed that the question would be resolved in a matter of years. But that hasn’t happened. Only one Orthodox bishop – the metropolitan Nicola – telephoned the Catholic bishop of Lugoj in January 1990 to express to him his readiness to return the cathedral and, just two weeks later, with a solemn procession, the keys were handed over. To this day, Orthodox and Greek-Catholics live together in a climate of peace and friendship in that diocese. We ask the rest of the Orthodox Church to show the same willingness and benevolence. We are convinced that this climate can be created”. What are you afraid of? “There’s no reason to be afraid today. Since the collapse of the former regime 12 years have gone by and the situation has become stabilized: we now know how many Catholics there are and how many Orthodox. The fear of seeing a huge mass of Catholics arriving here is also wholly unfounded. The stance adopted by the Orthodox Church is one we too fail to understand. I believe that if they only showed greater willingness, they would encounter the approval of all the Romanian people and also of other countries. At Oradea, for example, we have conducted a census of the properties that belonged to the Catholic Church and have counted 220 churches. Of these however we are only asking for the return of the cathedral (in the town there are two cathedrals, one facing the other), the church adjacent to the seminary and a further 7 churches in smaller towns in the diocese. We also ask for the possibility of being able to celebrate alternately in some forty other churches. At the present time, our seminarians are obliged to celebrate in a room converted into a chapel. Masses are celebrated in school premises, private homes, or in the open air. I personally celebrate mass in a theatre”. The Pope speaks of injuries of the past… “We try not to harp on them but to go forward. The Orthodox Church too should receive from the State the properties expropriated by the former regime, such as land and houses… For us it’s difficult: from the window of the house where I live I see the Greek-Catholic cathedral. It’s the church where we were unable to bury my predecessor. That saddens us”. What impact does this problem have on the ecumenical process? “In this way we represent a ‘scandal’. Before the war, there was a climate of brotherhood between the Churches. I hope that this climate of peace and this willingness to understand and accept each other may return. The Holy Father has always insisted that this should take place. I pray that God may send his Spirit to illuminate us and enable us to walk in his footsteps. For our part there is no feeling of bitterness, no desire to go against our Orthodox brothers. We are ready to forgive and to let bygones be bygones, in the name of the one Lord”. M.C.B.