Patriarch Teoctist

Toader Arapasu, priest: born Tocileni, Romania 7 February 1915; tonsured as a monk 1935, taking the name Teoctist; ordained priest 1945; Bishop of Arad 1962-76; Metropolitan of Oltenia 1976-77; Metropolitan of Moldavia 1977-86; Patriarch of Romania 1986-2007; died Bucharest 30 July 2007.

Teoctist Arapasu, who led the Romanian Orthodox Church for more than two decades, followed his Church's tradition of accommodating to the prevailing power. As Patriarch during the final years of the Ceausescu dictatorship, he offered the dictator lavish and almost blasphemous paeans of praise. Following the December 1989 overthrow of the Ceausescu regime, Teoctist was forced to resign.

Although few of his countrymen expected him to speak out against Nicolae Ceausescu, Teoctist was clearly embarrassed after the overthrow of the old regime by his enthusiastic support for the late dictator, whom he later likened to King Herod. Unlike the rest of the hierarchy he partially recognised his guilt, but a few months later felt secure enough to return to office in the reaction that set in, offering his support to the new regime.

In the post-Communist era, Teoctist led a Church eager to re-establish its pre-eminence. The Church backed legislation eventually adopted last December that made it all but impossible for new faiths to gain full legal status. It took a hard line over churches confiscated from the Greek Catholics when their faith was abolished in the Communist period. Yet despite his Church's hostility to the Greek Catholics, Teoctist hosted John Paul II in May 1999, the first majority-Orthodox country the late pope visited. Teoctist made a return visit to the Vatican in 2002.

But Teoctist's reputation was undermined by the drip-drip of revelations from the Communist-era Securitate secret police archives in recent years. Securitate reports that he had joined the Fascist Iron Guard before the war and took part in a 1941 assault on a synagogue, that he was homosexual and that he had been an informer for the secret police did little to enhance his image.

Teoctist was born Toader Arapasu in 1915 in Tocileni, a village in the north-eastern region of Moldavia. The ninth of 10 children, he entered a monastery in 1928. He was tonsured as a monk in 1935 when he joined the monastery near Piatra Neamt in Moldavia, taking the religious name of Teoctist. He studied theology in Bucharest from 1940 to 1945 and was ordained priest on completion of his studies.

He began his ascent through the ranks of the hierarchy in 1950 when, at the age of 34, he became Patriarchal Vicar. He was successively Bishop of Arad, Metropolitan of Oltenia and, from 1977, Metropolitan of Moldavia, taking over from Iustin, who had just been elected Patriarch. The Moldavian Metropolitanate is traditionally the stepping stone to the rank of Patriarch.

Teoctist, who had also served as rector of the Theological Institute in Bucharest from 1950 to 1954, wrote several theological and devotional works and contributed to the Church's official journals.

However, it was his contribution to the growing cult of personality that surrounded Ceausescu that was better remembered. In 1983, for example, he marked Ceausescu's 65th birthday with a five-page article in Ortodoxia entitled simply "Homage", extravagant in its praise:

A heart ever open towards the needs, joys and pains of all, a clear mind directed towards the heights of prosperity of the country and its sons, and a resolute determination to reach the haven of wellbeing and peace at home and abroad - these are the characteristics with which the personality of our beloved and esteemed president is endowed.

By the grotesque standards of Ceausescu's later years this exaggerated style may have been mild, but Teoctist could never have been appointed to high office without such public demonstrations of loyalty.

Teoctist was reported to have long coveted the office of Patriarch, and his opportunity arose in July 1986 after the death of Iustin. Although Metropolitan of Moldavia, the natural successor, and candidate acceptable to the Communist authorities, some believed his age - he was already 71 - would count against him. But on 9 November the Electoral College of the Church's Synod duly chose him to succeed Iustin and he was consecrated the Church's fifth patriarch a week later.

Following his election, the Teoctist paid tribute to Ceausescu in the pages of the Party daily Scinteia. He praised the president's creativity "placed in the service of the uninterrupted progress and the happiness of its entire people" and expressed "special gratitude and deep recognition for the conditions of full religious liberty in which the Romanian Orthodox Church and the country's other religious denominations carry out their activities."

This and other similar statements hardly endeared him to the long-suffering Romanians, who were enduring poverty and repression in Ceausescu's last, paranoid years. It was during this time that the dictator was pursuing ambitious plans to remodel Bucharest city centre, which entailed the needless destruction of churches and residential districts to build grandiose monuments to his megalomania. Teoctist made no public statements against government policy.

Teoctist was also obliged, like other prominent Romanian church leaders, to spread the false message around the world that the government allowed full religious freedom and deny reports of persecution. At an interdenominational conference in Bucharest in August 1989, Teoctist "emphasised the religious freedom which the religions in Romania have enjoyed during the last 45 years, in which they could unfold their activity unhampered."

As the "state" Church in an atheist state, the Orthodox Church was more controlled but less persecuted than others. Yet even Teoctist must have been embarrassed to have made such remarks that he knew were untrue at a time when the attention of the world was increasingly drawn to the Ceausescu regime's abysmal human rights record.

It was only after Ceausescu's overthrow in December 1989 that Teoctist grudgingly admitted some guilt, but claimed to have done his best to oppose government policy. He sharply rejected allegations of collaboration, claiming "I simply defended the faith against Communism".

He declared that for three years he had been trying to arrange an appointment with Ceausescu to discuss the Church's concerns, but was always told the dictator was too busy. After the massacre of demonstrators in Timisoara during the early days of the uprising against the old regime, Teoctist claimed he was about to send a telegram to Ceausescu calling for an end to the bloodshed when he heard the news that the dictator had fled.

Romanians were sceptical of these unprovable claims, though many believed the Church had not compromised on questions of faith. Had the Church not demonstrated its public loyalty to the Ceausescu regime, many thought, it would have been ruthlessly destroyed. But within days of the overthrow of Ceausescu calls increased for the Patriarch to resign, led by theology students and seminarians. The newly appointed minister of culture, Andrei Plesu, publicly invited Teoctist to retire to a monastery. The Patriarch bowed to pressure and resigned.

But in April 1990, only three months later, the Holy Synod voted to reinstate him, allegedly at the request of many priests and believers. The synod maintained that Teoctist was returning to office, declaring that he had not resigned in January, merely withdrawn temporarily on health grounds. By April the National Salvation Front, largely made up of ex-Communists, was firmly in control and the Orthodox Church hierarchy had given it its total backing.

The Church had resumed its role of state Church, a position it had occupied under the wartime Fascist regime and, paradoxically under an anti- religious regime, during the Communist era. Only one other bishop resigned after accusations of collaboration with the Ceausescu regime and he, like Teoctist, later returned to office. There was to be no thoroughgoing renewal of the Orthodox leadership.

Criticism of the Church hierarchy stepped up after opposition to the National Salvation Front government crystallised. In April 1991, anti-Communist demonstrators, who became a regular feature in Bucharest, started chanting "Down with the Patriarch". They had been angered by a letter from Teoctist calling on priests, monks and laypeople to support the National Salvation Front actively and to gather donations on its behalf.

Ever since its recognition in 1866 at the "dominant religion of the Romanian state", the Romanian Orthodox Church has had to demonstrate its loyalty to the country's rulers. Patriarch Teoctist faithfully continued this role from 1986 to 1989 under Ceausescu and from the end of 1989 onwards under the National Salvation Front and its successors.

Felix Corley

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