A new people

“What today is still difficult at the level of church leaders, is not so at the grassroots. Ecumenism between ordinary people is progressing by leaps and bounds. One day the hierarchy, now justly engaged in official dialogue, will realize that a new people, transcending the divisions between the Churches, is being born from the grassroots”. So says Father VICTOR-EMILIAN DUMETRESCU , 39 years old, Romanian and a priest since 1997. Father Dumetrescu lives in Bucharest. At school he breathed the air of official atheism, but without being tainted by it. He entered seminary in 1991, and long studied in Rome. Today he works actively for the evangelization of his country, also within the Magnificat Community of Catholic Charismatic Renewal. With him we reflect on the new frontiers of ecumenical relations between Christians and on the prospects opened by Romania’s entry into the EU together with Bulgaria on 1st January this year. Of the 22 million inhabitants of Romania, 86% are Orthodox, and 6% Catholics. It’s one thing to engage in ecumenism in the West, where Catholics are in the majority; it’s quite another to do so where Catholics form a minority. What new frontiers are being opened today in relations between Christians? “Many things have changed in Romania since 1999, following John Paul II’s visit to our country, which helped to restore spiritual serenity after the strong tensions that had been created during the years of Communism. Catholics had been regarded as a sect, even by the Orthodox. After 1948 Catholics were subjected to harsh persecutions, in particular the members of the Greek-Catholic Church, due to its union with Rome. Many churches were confiscated by the regime and not a few of these buildings were transferred to the Orthodox, and have still to be restored to us”. Hard times, undoubtedly… but today haven’t you put them behind you? “What is happening fills me with wonder and emotion. Our Magnificat Community, and not only ours, is also being attended by those of Orthodox faith. They participate in our activities, they confess, they receive communion… but they want to remain Orthodox. They have discovered a new vocation, that of working for unity. They are a prophecy for the Churches and are building from the grassroots a new horizon of ecumenism. Catholics have no problem with all this, but the Orthodox don’t look favourably on their faithful taking communion, or going to confession, in a Catholic church. Many wish to take communion every day, and this is still not a practice in common use in the Orthodox Church, indeed for some it is sacrilege. The accusation that the Orthodox make against Catholics, that they are proselytising, is unfounded: our concern is to offer people a way for the growth of the experience of faith. That is demonstrated by the fact that the Orthodox who come to our churches do not renounce their own tradition”. In Turkey Benedict XVI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I expressed their common will to work together for the evangelization of Europe. How is evangelization seen by the Romanian Orthodox Church? “For the Orthodox, in my view, evangelization today is structurally impossible, firstly because priests are heavily engaged on the front of their own family, and secondly because the monasteries, the other great facet of the Orthodox spiritual experience, are sources of spirituality but almost impenetrable places; the monks, other than their immediate entourage, live without any real contact with people. It should also be said that at times Orthodox priests are not sufficiently prepared at the pastoral and cultural level. Many of them were trained for the priesthood in a hurry and then ordained. Within the Orthodox clergy there is no mission mentality that would lead them to promote pastoral activities in the parishes and go out towards people. Today the Orthodox Church simply waits for people to go to church. But how many go?”. But surely it’s not only among the Orthodox that the problems arise? “No, undoubtedly not. The fact is that the fresh wind of Vatican Council II has not yet reached many Romanian Catholic priests. The involvement of the laity is mentally very difficult for many of them. During the years of Communism, priests were considered by the State those responsible for any problem that might arise in the Church, and so, in order not to risk imprisonment or create tensions, they felt themselves forced to keep a tight grip on the few pastoral activities allowed to them. And this over the years has created an ingrained clerical mentality that’s not easy to dislodge”. How do you see the entry of your country into the European Union? “It’s a great opportunity. People are full of optimism. Many have been able to embrace their loves ones, who had long emigrated to the West and could not return because they were clandestine refugees. Today they can travel freely. Between Christmas and New Year’s Day it is calculated some 30,000 people returned home. This new freedom could create for our country, though at the cost of many sacrifices, new conditions for economic development. The average wage for a Romanian manual worker today is between 100 and 250 euros. Many however are no longer willing to accept these conditions, also imposed by the Western firms that have installed plants in Romania. Manpower is beginning to grow short, given the high number of emigrants. But we are also witnessing in Romania today the mass immigration of Chinese, who by contrast are happy to accept low wages”.