Cardinal Lucian Mureşan, major archbishop of the Greco-Catholic Church in Romania and one of the most important witnesses suffered by the persecution of the communist regime that fell in 1989, died this Thursday, September 25 at 94.
As reported Vatican NewsMurealle died in his residence in Bloj in Romania, after several months of illness.
Receive the main news of ACI Press by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social networks. Subscribe to our free channels today:
Lucian Murealle was created Cardinal when he was already 80 in 2012, during the Pontificate of Benedict XVI. This type of Cardinal Creation, when the age has already been overcome to be a voter in an eventual conclave, is a pontifical recognition of the church service offered by those who receive it.
Who was Cardinal Murealle?
Lucian Mureşan was born on May 23, 1931 in Transylvania, Ferneziu, current district of the city of Baia Mare in Romania, in a family of 12 children.
After the suppression of the Greco-Catholic Church of Romania in 1948, he had to abandon his high school studies and, for a while his priestly vocation, to be professionally trained as a carpenter.
In 1955, the Bishop of Alba Iulia, Mons. Márton Arron, exceptionally authorized the entry of five young Greco-Catholics, including Murealle, at the theological institute of the Catholic Church of Latin Rite in that diocese.
In the fourth year Murealle and the others who entered with him were expelled from the Faculty by the Department of Cults, which began the siege of the Securitythe secret police of the Communist regime of Cauescu.
For ten years, he worked in the direction of road and bridge maintenance in the District of Maramureş, but continued to study theology clandestinely.
On December 19, 1964 Mureşan was ordained a priest. He also exercised his ministry in hiding, working in the youth and vocational pastoral. After the death of Bishop Dragomir in 1986, he directed the Paramureş Eparquía.
One of the last public speeches of Cardinal Mureşan, already sick, was the commemoration of the Blessed and martyr of the communist regime, Cardinal Iuliu Hossu, chaired by Pope Leo XIV in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican.
Among other things, he said that in the testimony of Cardinal Mártir he had found the force “to forgive and love those who persecuted him.”
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.