The beginning of the foundation of the Basilian Sisters in Romania took place in 1946 in Gherla with Mother Ana Maria Fekete, a Sister of the Congregation of Vincentian Sisters in Satu Mare.
Maria Fekete was born is Satu Mare and belonged to a Greek-Catholic family of Romanians. She got to know the Roman-Catholic Vincentian nuns in the city, to whom she got attached to a lot. So, she felt the desire to enter this congregation. On July 19, 1924, at the age of eighteen she entered the Congregation, after which she received permission to change her rite. On September 14, 1925, she took her monastic vows. She then attended nursing school and worked in a hospital. The next twenty years were dedicated to prayer, community life and the care of the sick. After a while, a sensitive situation began to concern her because many Greek Catholic young women were wanting to enter the monastery but who were rejected for various reasons. The selection of candidates was very competitive because there was an abundance of Vincentian Sisters, about four hundred, in Satu Mare and there was a lack of space. The young Greek Catholic girls also had difficulty learning Hungarian.
In the beginning of 1940 Sr. Ana felt inspired to do something for these girls. This inspiration became a difficult struggle for her soul which required much discernment. She thought it could be a temptation from the devil to leave the monastery. She shared her struggles with her spiritual Father, who urged her to pray to understand God’s plan. In 1942, the Vincentian Sisters who were caring for the war victims in Budapest asked the community of Satu Mare to send them some nurses to help them. Among those who were appointed to go was Sr. Ana.
Providence works mysteriously and wonderfully. In 1944 Sr. Ana was sent from Budapest to Gherla to accompany a seriously injured officer. After handing the wounded soldier over to his family, she stayed for a few days in Gherla, where at the Greek-Catholic church she met Basilian Fr. Leon Manu, the superior of Nicula Monastery. This meeting was the beginning of a journey which in a short time would lead to the founding of a community of Basilian Greek Catholic Sisters in Gherla. Her desire to do something for the Greek Catholic girls who were rejected by other communities coincided with the desire of the Basilian monks to create a female branch of the Basilian Order and the desire of His Grace Iuliu Hossu who wanted to found an Eparchial Congregation of Greek Catholic Sisters.
An important event occurred that propelled all these desires. In Gherla there was a Nursing Home for the poor managed by the Armenian Catholic Church. The Sisters who took care of the poor in the Nursing Home left Gherla at the end of 1944 with the withdrawal of the German troops. So Father Lengyel Zoltan asked other congregations to take over the care of the Nursing Home but he did not receive any favorable responses. He approached Sr. Ana Fekete with the request to help him find a solution. In the wake of her troubles, she consulted with Fr. Leon Manu. He, foreseeing the possibility of establishing a community of Sisters, suggested that Sr. Ana stay in Gherla. The city was close to Nicula, so she could collaborate very well with him. There were many girls willing to embrace religious life, but they were not accepted into existing congregations because they were poor and especially because there were too many vocations. So Sr. Ana took over the Nursing Home. This gave her the opportunity to have a house to live in and a place where she could accept girls willing to enter the monastery. This is how she started working with the first group of candidates. Slowly, her dream became a reality. Together with Fr. Leon Manu she went to Bishop Iuliu Hossu to share her intention. The Bishop was very glad to hear of the establishment of a new congregation, because he knew that there were many young women willing to enter the monastery. The Nursing Home was like a monastery. In a short time, a group of ten young women gathered around Mother Ana, willing to consecrate themselves to the Lord.
They kept a prayer schedule, lived community life and experienced their dedication in the service of the elderly.
The approval from Rome came in early 1948, at a time when the communist regime was in power and had issued restrictive laws against the Greek Catholic Church. At the end of the year all monks and nuns were forced to leave their monasteries. Some were taken to prison and gave their lives for the faith and their monasteries were confiscated.
Mother Ana stayed at the Nursing Home with the candidates until the autumn of 1949, when they were expelled by the secret police, both from the Nursing Home and from city of Gherla. Full of faith, and endowed with tenacity, Mother Ana, after some weeks, returned to Gherla and bought a small house with money received from her brother, and gathered again the candidates around her. She did not have any more guidance from Fr. Manu, who had been expelled from Nicula Monastery, nor from Bishop Iuliu Hossu, who was arrested. Mother Ana trusted in God and offered herself to Him by secretly continuing her mission of training young women and supporting the Greek Catholic faithful.
In 1950, a group of Jesuits were brought to Gherla on house arrest. At the request of Mother Ana, they agreed to take care of the spiritual direction of the candidates. The Provincial Superior, Father Chira, was the spiritual director of the candidates until he was arrested. He often said to them, “The grace of God is powerful, for what else has brought you in these times and keeps you here? Only His grace. Neither the monastery, nor the habit, nor the quiet place attracts you, for you have none of these things” (from a statement by Sr. Bazilia)
On March 25, 1952, the first candidates entered the novitiate. The Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine rite was celebrated by Fr. Cornel Chira and other brothers, in great secrecy, in one of their rooms. At the beginning of the Divine Liturgy Father said to them: “This is what it means to be a fool for Christ! The Church has been abolished, all bishops and priests are in prison, but you willingly begin a new journey into the unknown, both on a personal and community level, because it is precisely the act of the birth of a new congregation.” (Statement by Sr. Bazilia) Fr. Chira told the candidates that with the consent of Mother Ana they had chosen significant names for them, considering that the new community should be placed on four strong pillars, on the Apostle Peter and Paul and on the first Founders of Monks.
So, the first sisters were named: Bazilia, Benedicta, Petronella and Paula. Later three more groups of young women entered the Novitiate under the guidance of the Jesuits Fathers. The last group was in March 1954. There were ten novices in all. The acceptance of new Sisters ended because some Jesuits were arrested and taken to prison and others were moved to another residence under the control of the secret police.
The newly founded community of Sisters continued their journey sharing the fate of the persecuted Greek Catholic Church. The Sisters attended Roman Catholic Churches where they participated in the Liturgy and they gathered in houses to pray secretly together with other Greek Catholic believers who remained faithful.
In May 1959, Mother Ana was called to witness her faith and fidelity in communist prisons. She was sentenced to prison for the crime of conspiring against the social order and the total confiscation of her wealth.
The reason for the conviction is as follows: “Ever since 1946, the defendant tried to establish, together with the former Basilian monk and priest Manu Leon Iulian, a Greek-Catholic female branch of the Order of St. Vincent, called the “Immaculate Heart” Congregation. She also attracted around her various nuns and young girls whom she organizes in the underground.
She was in prison for four years and was released in January of 1963. Even before the arrest of Mother Ana, the group of sisters dispersed to different places in search of work and only three sisters remained in Gherla: Srs. Bazilia, Benedicta and Mihaela. After her release from prison, Mother Ana was not allowed to live with the sisters. The police took her to a house with mandatory residence. She was very weak because in prison she had tuberculosis. After a while she was taken to a TB sanatorium then was given permission to go to her family. From there, on January 4, 1970, God called her to Himself.
The Re-foundation of the Community of the Basilian Sisters and its official Acceptance into the Order
The seed cast into good ground did not remain unfruitful. A year after the death of Mother Ana, the Lord provided a new beginning. In 1971, Basilian Father Sabin Dăncuş OSBM, knew several girls willing to consecrate themselves to God. With the approval of his Provincial Superior and the Eparchial Bishop, he established a community of Basilian Sisters in Cluj.
The first Sisters entered the novitiate in 1972 in great secrecy. They were: Sr. Iustina Iusco, Sr. Ioana Bota, Sr. Ecaterina Pintea and Sr. Agneta Chindriş.
All the activities were done in great secrecy and with great caution. Fr. Sabin Dăncuș knew what communist detention meant because he had been in prison from 1950 to 1956 and was still under the supervision of the secret police. Yet the fire of the Spirit was stronger and, confident in the grace of the Lord, he was totally devoted to souls he cared for. In 1974, a group of four Sisters from the Community founded by M. Ana in Gherla learned that a new Community of Basilian Sisters had been established in Cluj. They got in touch with Fr. Sabin, who was surprised to learn of the Community founded by Mother Ana, and asked to be united with the community from Cluj. The group of sisters were: Sr. Basilia, Sr. Benedicta, Sr. Mihaela and Sr. Macrina.
With the Lord’s blessing and the intense work of Fr. Sabin, between 1972-1989, there were many vocations to the Sisters’ community. In particular, the period of the year 1980 can be called a time when the community was flourishing because at this time many young women entered.
Fr. Sabin Dăncuș was involved in the formation and spiritual direction of each Sister. He visited each Sister, typed prayer and meditation books on a typewriter by himself so that the Sisters could live up to their faith in a persecuted Greek Catholic Church.
In 1978, seven years after the establishment of the community, Fr. Sabin, aware that the Sisters needed a motherly heart, advised them to choose a superior but he remained their spiritual Father. Thus, he organized elections and the first superior elected was Mother Ioana Bota. She carried the burden of the community throughout the Underground Period in close collaboration with Fr. Sabin. She had two more terms of office during freedom, that is, a total of twenty-one years of service in the Province’s leadership. At the same time, the first councilors were chosen: Sr. Ecaterina Pintea, Sr. Iustina Iusco and Sr. Aloisia Pop. Not having a well-established rule, the term of office was not specified, so this administration remained for the entire underground period. Mother Ioana Bota prepared many materials that were helpful in educating the Sisters in living their religious life and wrote spiritual books by hand.
From the 1980’s on, when the persecution of the Church in Romania decreased in intensity, the Sisters became courageous and organized themselves into four local communities. This does not mean they lived together, because it was not possible, but even though they lived in different cities, mostly alone or with their families, they went at least once a month to the nearest community for a day of prayer and communion. The four centers of local communities were: Cluj-Napoca, Gherla, Năsăud and Sălăjeni. Each community had a local superior and meetings were held on Sundays in rotation. Mother Ioana and Fr. Sabin were available to the Sisters at every monthly community meeting. So every weekend they were on the road, by train or by bus, even though they both had to work. During the clandestine period, the Sisters wore the monastic habit upon entering the novitiate during the ceremony but then the habit was hidden. Because it was not possible to wear the monastic habit, the Sisters devised a secular habit that was worn in the house during meetings. The good God blessed us with many vocations, so that at the end of 1989 when the Church was restored to freedom, the community counted sixty sisters.
The Activity of the Sisters during the underground period
The Basilian sisters were concerned not only about their own formation, but, like the first persecuted Christians, they transformed their own houses into chapels of prayer and their whole lives into a mission for the people. They boldly confessed their faith and facilitated the administration of Holy Communion and catechesis, thus preparing new generations of children and young people for a Christian life. We can say that the life of the Basilian Sisters during this period can be compared to true lights that showed the way of faith even in the darkness of the ideology propagated by the communist regime. During this time, the Sisters worked at various jobs, being employed at State companies, to support themselves. No one knew about them being nuns, everything was secret.
Connection with the Order of the Sisters of Saint Basil the Great in Rome
The Basilian Sisters in Romania learned from the Basilian Fathers that in many countries in Europe and America there are Basilian Sisters, centralized in an Order, with the general leadership in Rome. Their desire was to connect with them, but it was very difficult. In 1984, a priest close to the sisters, Fr. Virgil Florian and his wife Lucia Florian, went to Rome and brought the first notice about the existence of the Basilian Sisters in Romania. At the beginning of 1988 Fr. Sabin Dăncuș went to Rome with all the information about the Sisters and presented it to the General Superior and her Council.
In October 1988 Sr. Valeria Bolfă was allowed to go to Rome for a month. An invitation from the General Curia had been sent from Rome to M. Ioana Bota, Sr. Valentina Hadarau and Sr. Valeria Bolfa but the communists didn’t give a visa to M. Ioana Bota and Sr. Valentina. Only Sr. Valeria got a visa. Sr. Valeria became the living presence of the existence of the Sisters and their desire for union with the Order.
The next encounter was with Mother General Christopher Malcovsky and General Counselor Sr. Gabriela Husulak, who received visas and visited Romania, a communist country, as tourists in April 1989. They were impressed with the way the Sisters authentically lived their vocation even if no one knew that they were nuns. Mother Christopher proposed to the General Chapter delegates gathered in Rome their acceptance into the Order. Thus, during the General Chapter of June 1989, the Chapter Delegates approved the incorporation of the Sisters from Romania into the Order. On June 2, 1989, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, His Eminence Cardinal D. Simon Lourdusamy, approved and blessed the incorporation of the Sisters from Romania as a Province within the Order. Based on these approvals, the General Curia, through the PN Decree, 359/July 1989, incorporated the Sisters from Romania into the Order as a Province under the patronage of the “Immaculate Heart of the Holy Virgin Mary”.
Freedom
With the fall of Communism, the Greek Catholic Church was granted its freedom and with it the Sisters were free to exist as a community. The miraculous work of the Lord can be seen in the fact that on December 1948 six candidates and their Foundress went into the underground without having a convent and in December, 1989 sixty Sisters with final Vows, some novices and candidates, came out from the underground.
Due to the fact that they had no reason to wait for the return of any monasteries because they had none initially, the Sisters immediately began the steps to build a monastery in Cluj-Napoca, on the grounds of a small house of Sr. Veronica Susman. The foundation stone for the construction of the first monastery of the Basilian Sisters was laid in December 1990, by Bishop George Guțiu, the Bishop of Cluj-Gherla, and many priests, including Rev. Sabin Dăncuș OSBM. The work lasted two years so that on July 18, 1993, the blessing of Saint Macrina Monastery, the consecration of the inner Chapel and the altar in the courtyard took place. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated by Bishops George Guțiu and Lucian Mureșan together with the Apostolic Nuncio in Romania, Mons. John Bukovsky, SVD, and forty priests. More than a hundred consecrated people and approximate five thousand faithful participated. For the Basilian Sisters it was a day of blessing and immense joy because God helped us to finish this construction.
The Sisters offered their service to the Greek Catholic Church and responded generously to the requests of the Bishops by collaborating in the restoration of the Church. Thus, since 1990, at the invitation of Bishop Ioan Ploscaru, three sisters went to Lugoj, to take care of catechizing children, young people and adults. They served in the cathedral and the episcopal chancery and helped to organize the Eparchy. In 1992 to1994 a house for the sisters was purchased which was divided into three apartments and then was renovated. Over the years, several sisters have lived in this community and the house was renovated many times.
In 1991, at the invitation of Bishop George Guțiu, a group of sisters started working at the kitchen of the Theological Institute in Cluj, thus opening a new community near the Chancery.
Because the Sisters did not have a Formation house in Romania and vocations were many, at the invitation of M. Dia, General Superior, a group of twelve novices, in 1991, went to our Contemplative Monastery in Albano-Laziale, Rome, for their novitiate. It was the first official Novitiate of Basilian Sisters of Romania. They were under the guidance of Sr. Valentina Hadarau, Novice Mistress. A year later, another five novices went to Rome to join the group and then Sr. Laurentia Bolfa-Otic also went to help. They stayed there in Albano-Laziale until July 1993 when they relocated to Cluj for the blessing of the Monastery. They were the first community in the new Monastery of St. Macrina.
In 1992, at the invitation of Bishop Lucian Mureșan, a new community was opened in Baia Mare close to the Chancery, with the Sisters working in the Seminary’s kitchen and chapel. The first Sisters who started the mission here were elderly but they wanted to make themselves available to the Church and give everything they could for the training of priests. After two years these Sisters were replaced by younger ones. In 1993, the family of Ioan and Silvia Pasca donated to the Basilian Sisters a property on the Hill of the Cross. Their intention was that the Sisters build a pilgrimage monastery there. After that, a community of five Sisters began their community life here.
Also in 1993, a house was bought in Gherla and the Sisters who until then lived separately moved to the new house to live in community. Then in the year 2000 a larger house was bought which was next door to the house of the Sisters. The two houses were united and thus a beautiful space was created where the Sisters could live in community.
In 1996, the foundation stone was laid for the construction of a pilgrimage church in Baia Mare. The construction work lasted three years. The church was built in the forest, an access road was built to it, the Way of the Cross was built on the hill leading to the church and a grotto of the Mother of God was built above. On August 1, 1999, the church dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God was consecrated. From this year, the August 15 pilgrimage, the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God has been held annually. Later a spirituality center was built and in the year 2000 it was blessed. Twelve wooden houses were build in 2004 for those who would wish to make a retreat in this oasis of tranquility.
Ministries
Basilian Sisters serve in three Eparchies of the Greek Catholic Metropolia in Romania. They have monasteries in Cluj, Gherla, Baia Mare and Lugoj. Communal life, prayer and fraternal communion, service to one another as well as ministry to the poor and abandoned characterize monastery life.
Cluj-Napoca
Saint Macrina Monastery- the Motherhouse of the Basilian Sisters in Romania includes: The Province leadership, which administers the Province, the novitiate, a place of formation for future members, the community, which consists of Sisters who work in various ministries, and Sister-students.
Promotion of Life: “Providence” Clinic – Sisters provide counseling for expectant mothers, a woman-doctor consultant and promote life by action against abortion.
Preschool – Sisters offer a scholastic developmental program according to age, and state requirements. The program includes Religion, English and Italian and an after school program.
Catechization– Sisters teach religion in state schools. In addition, Sisters catechize youth and young adults who come to the monastery weekly. Sisters also catechize in parishes.
Basilian Tertiaries – associate members of the Basilian Sisters who participate in daily prayers of Sisters, assist on occasions and meet as a group regularly.
Ministry to the Poor – At lunchtime, Sisters provide help for those who come and their families.
Gherla
Annunciation Monastery – houses a community of older and sick Sisters. The younger Sisters participate in parish life. They catechize and serve God’s people. The elderly sustain the community and the Church by their prayers.
Baia Mare
Sisters run a retreat center attached to the monastery. Twelve hermitages set on the mountainside near the beautiful monastery wooden church are for those who desire to experience “pustinia” and pray to the Lord in “silence”. Throughout the entire year, Sisters host groups, which come for retreats and days of prayer.
Lugoj
Sisters work in the Bishop’s residence and the Greek-Catholic Cathedral. They teach English in a state-school, catechize children and are responsible for Basilian Tertiaries with whom they meet periodically. They also help the poors and sick people.
