Professor Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant’Egidio Community explained that Eastern Catholics “belonged to a group that communist policy did not admit in any part of the Eastern empire (from the former Czechoslovakia to Romania), with rare exceptions, such as in the small and tormented Bulgarian community and in Hungary. These pages illustrate the Soviet design to exterminate Eastern Catholicism.”
Referring to the term “martyr,” Riccardi Explained that “this is a word which is abused in our language.” In this way, people speak about “suicide martyrdom, which is very different from Christian martyrdom.” Christian martyrs “do not die in order to kill others but rather give their life to save the life of others, so that they do not have to give up their faith, to support other believers out of love. They are not seeking death, but they do not renounce their faith or human behavior in order to save their own life. This is the story that is told in these pages.”
Shocking testimonies
Msgr. Tertulian Ioan Langa, 82, spoke of his 16 years in communist prison camps, describing the “massive and threatening atheistic Soviet presence on the Romanian borders,” the “violent and atrocious presence of atheistic communism” and “the brutal and humiliating presence of Soviet troops who had occupied almost a third of the national territory.”
In spine-tingling terms he described the indescribable: the countless times he was interrogated, the years of torture, deprivation, humiliation, and unspeakable suffering, the “diabolic rituals” prisoners underwent to make them talk. What became important for him and helped him to survive were his own rituals: praying, composing litanies, remembering and reciting Psalms.
“I have never written much about these dramatic experiences,” said Msgr. Langa today. “Who can believe what seems unbelievable? Who can believe that the laws of biology can be overcome by the will? But even Jesus was not believed by all who saw Him. ‘After this many of His disciples drew back and no longer went about with him’. Nothing is pure chance in life. Every second the Lord gives us is laden with grace – the impatient benevolence of God – and with our chance to either answer it or, filled with fear, to refuse it.”