In spite of the fact that a mixed commission of dialogue was created in 1999, the Orthodox Church continues to refuse to restore to Byzantine-rite Catholics the churches confiscated by the Communist regime and Catholic property prior to 1948. The thorny question has recently been revived by the French Catholic daily “La Croix” which has published the testimony of Father Mircea Martian, curate of the Greek-Catholic cathedral of Cluj and diocesan delegate for relations with the media. The priest reported to the paper’s correspondent the case of a funeral of a Greek Catholic at Salva (100 km from Cluj) which was made possible only thanks to the intervention of the police forces. In actual fact, as “La Croix” points out, it is not solely the Orthodox Church that is to blame for this situation: the government and the local authorities often profit from buildings that formerly belonged to the Catholic Church. The paper notes that of its 2,030 churches, the Greek-Catholic Church has so far managed to recover only 176 and that in 2004 the bishops registered 356 masses celebrated in improvised venues.
