The un-Christian activities of many of the priests in Roumania who sow seeds of unrest in the minds of the people, is condemned in a letter which the new Prime Minister, Professor Jorga, has addressed to the Patriarch of the Roumanian Church in reply to his message of congratulation on his assumption of office.
The Premier goes on to advise the Patriarch that, as head of the Roumanian Church, he ought to take more drastic measures to prevent his priests engaging in agitation against any section of the population, and should not shrink from dismissing them from their posts.
Complaints against priests engaging in antisemitic agitation in Roumania have been made frequently. The two priests, Dumitrescu and Berindei, for instance, were the ring-leaders, together with Danila, of the agitation in the Borsha district last summer, which finally led to the burning down of hundreds of Jewish houses.
It was reported that when Danila arrived in the district about 800 peasants collected in the Church, summoned there by the ringing of the Church bells, and the priests, Dumitrescu and Berindei, conducted a service, after which the peasants had to swear loyalty to Danila.
The Jews of Roumania, in their demands made to the Government, quoted by the late Mr. Lucien Wolf in his report on the Jewish minority in Roumania, put first on the list the demand that the Government should issue a proclamation signed by all the Ministers and by the Patriarch of the Orthodox Christian Chruch with a view to putting an end to the propaganda against the Jewish religion and the Jewish clergy, pointing out in particular that since the Bible is the foundation of Christianity attacks on the Bible are at the same time attacks on Christianity.
The Metropolitan of Moldavia, the head of the Church in that Province, sent out a circular at the end of 1928 to all the priests under his jurisdiction, prohibiting them from taking any part in the antisemitic movement, declaring that it is harmful to the State and opposed to the Christian religion. Other prelates joined him a few days later and a joint circular was issued to the priests under their jurisdiction prohibiting them from engaging in antisemitic activities. The issue of these circulars, it was explained, had been prompted by the action of the Holy Synod, which had recently been receiving complaints that large numbers of priests were engaging in antisemitic activity in Roumania, and had therefore sent a memorandum to all the Metropolitans and Bishops, demanding that they put down this widespread antisemitism among the clergy under their charge. The recent election campaign, in particular, it was stated, had disclosed the violent antisemitism which exists among some of the priests in the country districts. Antisemitism cannot be reconciled, the memorandum of the Holy Synod said, with the prestige and the status of a priest in the State Church, and the Holy Synod therefore demands that strict measures should be taken by the Prelates to wipe out the antisemitism among the clergy.
When Professor Cuza, soon after his re-election to Parliament last summer, delivered a speech from the tribune of the Chamber, insulting the Jewish religion, the President of the Bucharest Jewish Community, ex-Senator Bercovici, visited the head of the Roumanian Church, the Patriarch Miron, who told him that he strongly condemned such attacks on the Jewish faith, and considered them to be irreconcilable with Christian teachings.
The Metropolitan of Moldavia drew the attention of the Holy Synod in 1926 to a pamphlet which Professor Cuza had published entitled “The Book of Christianity and the Teachings of Jesus”, in which he had written that Jesus was only a symbol and that the Old Testament did not bind Christians in any way. The Old Testament, he said, is a Jewish work and a product of Satan.
The Metropolitan of Moldavia, therefore, asked the Holy Synod to excommunicate Professor Cuza for having insulted the Christian faith.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
