Patriarch Justinian of Romania
Justinian Marina was a Romanian Orthodox prelate. He was the third patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, serving between 1948 and 1977.
Parish priest in the Râmnic Diocese
Ioan Marina was born in the village of Suieşti, in the former commune of Cermegeşti, Vâlcea County, to a family of farmers. As his mother wanted him to become a priest and he had a natural tendency toward learning, in 1915 he entered the St. Nicholas Theological Seminary in Râmnicu Vâlcea. He graduated in 1923, that year also obtaining a teacher's diploma, after taking an examination at the Normal School in the same city.He began his social work on September 1, 1923, as a teacher at the primary school in Olteanca, Vâlcea County. A year later, on September 1, 1924, he was transferred, also as a teacher, to the primary school in Băbeni, Vâlcea County. Then, on October 14, 1924, he married Lucreţia Popescu, daughter of the priest Pavel Popescu, from the Braloştiţa commune, Dolj County. After this he became a priest in Băbeni, continuing to teach as well.
In 1925 he enrolled as a student at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Theology, receiving a licentiate in theology in 1929. The next year he quit work as a schoolteacher, becoming a full-time priest. Noticing that the talents of the young priest exceeded those meant for a village priest, Vartolomeu Stănescu, Bishop of Râmnic, called Marina to him and on November 1, 1932, named him director of the St. Nicholas Theological Seminary in Râmnicu Vâlcea. That day he was also assigned as a priest at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas, Râmnicu Vâlcea.
On September 1, 1933, he was transferred, at his request, to serve as a priest at the parish of St. George, Râmnicu Vâlcea, whose pastorate was then vacant. In 1935 he was named confessor to Râmnicu Vâlcea's scouts, and the next year he became catechizer to the pre-military boys of the city.
Marina's wife died on November 18, 1935, at the age of 27. Left a widower at 34, he did not remarry, raising his children, Silvia and Ovidiu, by himself.
On August 25, 1939, Fr. Marina was moved from the seminary headmastership to be the director of the diocesan printing press. In eight months, he surpassed expectations by paying off all debts to creditors of years past and re-establishing his printing press's credibility on the market. In the spring of 1940, he handed over the printing press, now debt-free, to the newly established Metropolitanate of Craiova. He refused to go to Craiova, being aggrieved at the disestablishment of the Râmnic Diocese on November 7, 1939.
In recognition of his merits, achieved over a decade and a half as a priest, the authorities of the Râmnic Diocese awarded him all priestly honorifics ; he was also elected to the Central Council of the General Association of Romanian Clergy. The Minister of Religion, upon the proposal of the Metropolitanate of Craiova, awarded him the "Cultural merit First Class for the Church".
Archbishop and Metropolitan of Iaşi
The future Patriarch Justinian owed his ascendancy within the church hierarchy to the fact that he had helped the Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to hide in the parish house at St. George's after the latter's escape from the Târgu Jiu internment camp in 1944. As the prominent Communist Ion Gheorghe Maurer later recalled, "After we passed Craiova by car, about 30 kilometers on, we stopped in a village where we were kept by a priest who was himself the Communists' man. The car went back to Craiova and we stayed in that village about three days until another car from Bucharest came, to take us to the capital."There are 15 references to Justinian in the book In God's Underground by Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor imprisoned by the communist regime. Wurmbrand was in constant trouble with the authorities because of his outspokenness towards the regime but he credits Justinian on using his influence in the early days of his Patriarchate to ensure he was allowed to keep his license to preach. However, later he describes Justinian as having become "wholly a tool of the Party".
The Metropolitan of Moldavia, Irineu Mihălcescu, who had been elected to his position on November 29, 1939, was ill and in serious need of a young, energetic and capable person to help him rebuild the diocese, gravely affected by war damage. The vicar bishop Valeriu Moglan was old and could barely handle the administration of Spiridonia, a large hospital in Iaşi. In the spring of 1945, Metropolitan Irineu asked the Ministry of Religion to set up another post of vicar bishop for the Metropolitanate of Moldavia. Once the request was granted, Metropolitan Irineu, as bishop of the place, proposed Ioan Marina for election to the post. At this point Marina was still at St. George's, a widower for almost a decade, and the metropolitan knew him well, having had him as a student and having encountered him while he was a bishop's assistant at Râmnic and then a metropolitan's assistant at Craiova.
At Metropolitan Irineu's proposal, the Holy Synod, in its July 30, 1945 session, after a canonical investigation and examination, approved Marina's election to the second, newly founded post of vicar bishop, at the Iaşi Metropolitan Cathedral, and accorded him the rank of a titular bishop, with the Titular see of Vaslui. On August 11, 1945, at Cetăţuia Monastery in Iaşi, the priest Ioan Marina was tonsured a monk, receiving the monastic name Justinian and being ordained an archimandrite as well. He was consecrated a bishop on Sunday, August 12, 1945, in the Iaşi Metropolitan Cathedral. He was consecrated by metropolitan Irineu and bishops Antim Nica of Cetatea Albă and Valeriu Moglan of Botoşăni.
On August 16, 1947, the aged and sick Metropolitan Irineu retired from his position and Patriarch Nicodim named Justinian as locum tenens until a permanent successor was elected. On November 19, 1947, the Ecclesiastical Electoral College met at Bucharest, with Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan of Transylvania presiding. Justinian Marina was elected Metropolitan of Moldavia. He was enthroned on December 28, 1947, at the Iaşi Metropolitan Cathedral, during a Divine Liturgy celebrated by an assembly of bishops, priests and deacons, in the presence of members of the Holy Synod, of representatives of the central and local governments, and of numerous clergy and laymen.
In the three years that he spent at Iaşi as vicar bishop and then Metropolitan of Moldavia, Justinian put in tremendous efforts to rebuild the diocese, heavily damaged by war and scorched by drought. He reorganised the economic section of the diocesan centre, so as to ensure better administration and control over resources, while he established clear objectives for the other sections. He restored the cathedral and the metropolitan's residence, as well as the nearby buildings, which had been marred by bullets and shells and left without windows, with cracked walls and holes in their roofs, and with the objects inside scattered and partly lost. He brought these buildings back into a well-functioning state, including the diocesan candle factory, which had almost ceased its activity during the war. At the same time, he hired young, virtuous monks to serve at the cathedral, naming the Archimandrite Teoctist Arăpaşu to the post of ecclesiarch. A severe drought in 1946–47 affected Moldavia, adding to the misery left by the war. Metropolitan Justinian permitted the first procession featuring the coffin containing the relics of Saint Parascheva, kept at Iaşi since then. The relics wended their way through the drought-deserted villages of Iaşi, Vaslui, Roman, Bacău, Putna, Neamţ, Baia and Botoşani Counties. The offerings collected on this occasion were distributed, based on Metropolitan Justinian's decisions, to orphans, widows, invalids, school cafeterias, churches under construction, and to monasteries in order to feed the sick, and old or feeble monks.
On February 27, 1948, Patriarch Nicodim died at the age of 83 under conditions viewed as suspect by some historians. He left vacant the seat of Patriarch of All Romania. To head the church in these uncertain times, a man was sought who had a lucid and penetrating mind, an organising spirit, and who was young, sufficiently energetic to defend the Church from the attempts of the Communist regime to dismantle it.
Elected Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church
The Great Ecclesiastical Electoral College, meeting in Bucharest on May 24, 1948, elected Justinian Marina Patriarch of All Romania. A statement of the Synod said that he had "shown himself worthy through his devotion to Orthodoxy, through his tireless ministry work until now, through a fruitful labour on behalf of the people and the Church, through a rather well-known parental tenderness, showing through the fulfillment of all the tasks and duties which he was assigned an unflappable obedience toward the Holy Synod and the laws of the country".On June 6, 1948, at the investiture ceremony in the hall of the Palace of the Parliament and the installation ceremony in St. Spiridon the New Church, Bucharest, Patriarch Justinian presented the agenda of his patriarchate. Among his objectives were: to prepare the clergy in the spirit of Orthodoxy and of the demands of the times; to restore Romanian monasticism; to reorganise theological education; to reunite the Church by returning the Greek-Catholics to Orthodoxy ; to strengthen brotherly relations with all Orthodox churches; to promote ecumenical relations with other Christian churches, etc.
In response to Patriarch Justinian's call to Greek-Catholic believers, on October 1, 1948, 37 Greek-Catholic priests and archpriests assembled in a gymnasium in Cluj to sign a declaration that they would convert to the Romanian Orthodox Church, as they no longer wished to receive orders from "Imperialist Rome". Two days later, their emissaries presented themselves at Bucharest under police escort before the Holy Synod, asking to be received into Orthodoxy. Prior to that, they had been laicized by their superior, Bishop Iuliu Hossu. As evident from this reference to Imperialism, this was a political move as well as a religious one, fitting in with the Cold War and denying the West a possible leverage in Romania. On October 21, 1948, a large popular assembly took place at Alba Iulia, organised by the Interior Ministry. 20,000 Greek-Catholic clergy and laity from across Transylvania participated; they were solemnly received into the Romanian Orthodox Church.