rogca.org - Press Release
August 14, 2013 - Irvine, CA - Congressman Andy Harris (R-MD) recently started a bi-partisan initiative in Congress urging Secretary of State John Kerry to put more pressure on the Romanian government to return the religious properties confiscated during the communist regime in Romania, including the church buildings confiscated "from the Greek Catholic Church that [was] summarily banned" by the communists. The State Department stated in reply that the restitution of religious properties in Romania is a "key priority" for the American administration.
"We write today to request that the State Department vigorously engage the Romanian government to end the travesty of justice which it has perpetuated by failing to fully restitute properties illegally confiscated from religious denominations after 1945," said the opening of the letter initiated by Congressman Harris and co-signed by other 19 members of Congress, 12 republicans and 7 democrats.
The slow pace of restitution of religious properties affects primarily the Greek-Catholics in Romania, also known in U.S. as Eastern Rite Catholics or Byzantine Catholics, who are not allowed to worship freely in their churches confiscated by the communists.
The Greek-Catholic Church was completely abolished by the communist regime in 1948 in Romania and had all of its properties confiscated by the government, and the church buildings and parish houses were given to the Romanian Orthodox Church. The Greek-Catholics were also forced by the communists to become Orthodox, and those who did not comply with this order were thrown in prison.
After the fall of communism in 1989, the Romanian Government failed to resolve in particular the issue of the confiscated Greek-Catholic churches. The Romanian Government denied the Greek-Catholics the right to use their confiscated churches and, from 1990 to 2004, also denied them the right to file lawsuits to get them back. The law suits filed after 2004 are being delayed unreasonably and there were few legislative initiatives in the Romanian Parliament to specifically stop the restitution of the Greek-Catholic churches back to their rightful owners.
The property restitution "is an Administration priority that we have long raised with Romania and other European partners," said Thomas B. Gibbons, the Acting Assistant Secretary and the signer of the letter of response from the State Department. "Advocating for the rights of the Romania’s religious and ethnic minorities, including the rights of the Jewish, Hungarian, Greek-Catholic and Roma communities, is a key priority of the US Embassy in Bucharest."
Every year the State Department releases the Human Rights Report and the International Religious Freedom Report about Romania, documenting the violation of human rights and religious freedom in Romania. The two State Department reports show that the Greek-Catholic community is, by far, the most discriminated religious minority in Romania.
"The lack of progress on restitution of Greek Catholic churches transferred by the former communist government to the Orthodox Church in 1948 remained a significant problem," it was stated by the State Department in the 2012 International Religious Freedom Report.
"We would like to thank Congressman Andy Harris for starting this initiative and all the other members of Congress who co-signed the letter to Secretary Kerry demanding that the basic human rights be respected in Romania," said Father Chris Terhes, president of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Association. "Their initiative provided hope for so many Catholics in Romania who are striving to have their human rights respected and be able to worship freely and without constraint in their own churches."
"We call on all members of U.S. Congress to demand Romanian officials to restitute the properties confiscated under the communist regime, which would close a sad chapter of the Romanian history and help the country evolve to a functional democracy," Father Terhes concluded.
The Romanian Greek-Catholic Church is one of the Eastern Churches part of the Catholic Church and in full communion with the Pope. Romanian Greek-Catholic Association is a California based organization that advocates world-wide for the end discrimination of the Greek-Catholic religious minority in Romania.
Contact: Father Chris Terhes, President
Telephone: 714-746-0623
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