12 Facts About Vasile Aftenie

Vasile Aftenie was a Romanian Auxiliary bishop of the Greek-Catholic Church, titular Bishop of Ulpiana, martyr of the faith and Servant of God of the Catholic Church.

Vasile Aftenie was beaten until his death in the communist regime's jails for refusing to abandon his Greek-Catholic faith and the United Romanian Church.

Vasile Aftenie took a doctorate in philosophy and theology in 1925 and then returned to Romania.

From 1934 to 1937 he was archpriest in Bucharest and from 1937 to 1939 Vasile Aftenie was canon of the Blaj cathedral.

On 12 April 1940, Vasile Aftenie was appointed bishop by Pope Pius XII, and on 5 June 1940 he was consecrated titular bishop of Ulpiana and Auxiliary bishop in the Blaj Cathedral, by metropolitan of Fagaras and Alba Iulia Alexandru Nicolescu, and returned to Bucharest as vicar bishop at St Basil's Church in Bucharest.

Vasile Aftenie's co-consecrators were Alexandru Rusu, Bishop of Maramures, and Ioan Balan, Bishop of Lugoj.

In October 1948 Vasile Aftenie severely reprimanded the 36 former Greek-Catholic priests who had signed up for Orthodoxy and arrived from Cluj to the Patriarchate of Bucharest to bring their so-called adherence to the Romanian Orthodox Church, abandoning the Romanian Church United with Rome.

The delegates from Cluj were at the Capsa Restaurant when Bishop Vasile Aftenie scolded them in public.

Vasile Aftenie replied: "Neither my faith nor my nation is for sale".

Vasile Aftenie was arrested on 28 or 29 October 1948 in Piata Romana, just after leaving St Basil's Church, and taken, together with the other five Greek-Catholic bishops, to Dragoslavele and from February 1949 to Caldarusani Monastery, which had been refashioned into a prison.

Since each bishop has the right to be buried in the church he served, the bones of Bishop Vasile Aftenie were exhumed in 2010, and his remains taken from Bellu cemetery to a Greek-Catholic church in Bucharest for storage on 13 May 2010, a request for his beatification having been submitted the year before.

Vasile Aftenie was beatified with the other six Bishops on that day in Blaj's Liberty Field.