Witnesses to Beatitude

Veteran authors Francisca Baltaceanu and Monica Brosteanu render extensive archival research into a readable, stand-alone volume about seven key figures in the outlawed Romanian Greek Catholic Church. Prefaced by the Greek Catholic bishop of Bucharest, the book synthesizes indispensable background information for reading the story of these twentieth-century church leaders from Transylvania where in 1700 an agreement of union was reached between the Romanian Orthodox leadership and the Catholic Church in Rome, forming the Romanian Church United to Rome, Greek Catholic.

In 1948 the Soviet-imposed government in Romania determined that the Romanian Greek Catholic Church no longer existed and detained its bishops: Vasile Aftenie, Valeriu Traian Frentiu, Ioan Suciu, Ioan Balan, Alexandru Rusu, and Iuliu Hossu. At the same time, it detained numerous priests including Tit Liviu Chinezu who was secretly consecrated bishop at the request of the papal nuncio. Witnesses to Beatitude traces the bishops' various origins and the extensive pressures put on them to cut their ties with the Vatican. For creatively resisting these pressures the seven men were put in the infamous Sighet prison and under house arrest where in 1969 Iuliu Hossu, the last to survive, was made a cardinal in pectore by Pope Paul VI.

The book garnered a large bipartisan Catholic and Orthodox readership in Romania where it was a bestseller at the 2019 Bookfest. Drawing from the casefile submitted to the Holy See to recognize the martyrdom of the seven bishops who were beatified in June 2019, the book documents how the Communist government conducted a fierce campaign to ban the Greek Catholic Church and made the Orthodox leadership look responsible. The book includes oral testimonies suggesting the life force and humor that brought the bishops through the storm. It also contains the full bibliography of the casefile and an introduction and updated bibliography for English-language readers.