Ioan-Aurel Pop, President of the Romanian Academy: Romanians hope for a better future through faith and trust in the Church

Historian and President of the Romanian Academy, Ioan-Aurel Pop, offered an interview to Q Magazine, in which he said: “Romanians, following their priests and holding church banners [as they sing in their national anthem – ed. note], have managed to escape dictatorship and hope for a better future through the power of faith and trust in the Church.”

Romanians, unlike other Europeans, continue to believe in God, a reality their leaders should respect when making decisions for them, he added.

“Many Romanians can humbly listen to a religious hymn, they know far more Christmas carols than others, they will humbly greet you with ‘Christ is risen!’, they will commemorate their dead with the ‘Memory eternal!’ ancient hymn and cry at night, by the vigil light, their departed and their living who are too, too far away. I have not seen Westerners doing the same,” the historian said.

“They marry in the church, cross themselves, baptize their children, confess their sins, and perform all the Church rites of passage for their dead relatives. Romanians have their houses, cars, household animals and other assets blessed by priests; during the year, they observe more feasts than others; they wish each other ‘Happy name-day!’ on their patron saint day.”

“One could object that these are not matters of substance. Whether they are or not, they mark people’s lives,” said the President of the Romanian Academy.

Faith and Church as civilising vectors

The faith of the people and the social involvement of the Church have resulted in the creation of public institutions based on a Christian ethos and Christian philanthropy: hospitals, schools and universities.

“In the Middle Ages, the Church was everywhere across Europe a ‘patron’ of culture. The Western universities are a creation of Church and faith,” noted the President of the Romanian Academy.

“The founder of Romanian higher education from the ‘St Sabbas’ Academy, also considered the father of Bucharest’s technical university ‘Politehnica’, Transylvanian Gheorghe Lazăr, was an archdeacon who completed his historical mission on the ground of the Church of Wallachia.”

“The children’s public education, literacy, reading and writing were ‘invented’ and sustained here exclusively by the Church, not by the state.”

Also, the first public hospital attested by written sources on the territories inhabited by Romanians was founded in Suceava by Metropolitan Anastasie Crimca in 1619, Pop said, while numerous hospitals with names of saints testify for the role of the Church in the creation of public health institutions.

And the involvement of the Church continues today: “We know that during the Covid-19 pandemic the Orthodox Church has offered aid in value of 4 million Euros”, Ioan-Aurel Pop added.

The Romanians, continuators of Eastern Romanity

Then he explained the meaning of Christian Europe and emphasized that Romanians are continuators of the Christian civilization built by the Eastern Roman Empire.

“The name of the ‘Byzantine’ Empire is a fiction, a convention of historians established starting from the 17th century. Until its fall, in 1453, the official name of the state founded in 330 by Emperor Constantine the Great, which had its centre at the New Rome (Constantinople), was that of ‘the Roman Empire’”, he mentioned.

“The only eastern nation which visibly continued the Roman legacy, also from the point of view of its ethnicity [of Latin origin – ed. note] was the Romanian people,” pointed out the academician. “This fact unfolded under the protection of Byzantium and perpetuated as a ‘Byzantium after Byzantium’ [according to famous Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga – ed. note].”

That is why, suggested the President of the Academy, Romanians do not need to imitate current Western Europenity, since they are carriers of an authentic Christian European legacy whose tradition dates back to more than a millennium ago.

“The fact that this civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire did not remain a (success) model for Europe… is another issue. But we remain steadfast: we belong to a European civilization of magnitude which we need to know and study, not ignore and despise,” added the President of the Romanian Academy.

“Who can certify that the [current – ed. note] Western way regarding faith is infallible, that only laicity can guarantee success and prosperity on the social, moral and spiritual levels?” he rhetorically asked.

Photography courtesy of the Metropolis of Cluj, Maramureș and Sălaj


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