In the last few days of August 1998, the international conference ‘People and Religions’ took place in Bucharest, organised by the Catholic lay organisation Sant’Egidio, which operates under the authority of the Holy See, and attended by over a thousand guests. Behind the scenes, however, discussions were taking place regarding the details of the visit that Pope John Paul II was to make to Romania in May 1999; a visit endorsed by the Patriarch and the hierarchs at the meeting of the Holy Synod in the spring of 1997. The ‘People and Religions’ meeting concluded on 1 or 2 September 1998 with a reception scheduled for 8 pm. When I arrived, right on time, at the Hotel București, the venue for the reception, there were only a few guests in the lobby, including Alexandru Paleologu, dressed in a dark-coloured suit. I went over to greet him, and we chatted for about a quarter of an hour until the members of the Synod arrived, after which a flood of guests poured in. Archbishop Bartolomeu Anania stopped beside us, after which the three of us climbed the stairs leading to the restaurant on the first floor of the hotel, the high-ranking hierarch holding me by one arm and Alexandru Paleologu by the other. It is one of my fondest memories.
Back then, on some mornings, I would occasionally receive a phone call from Alexandru Paleologu, who would end the call with the wish ‘Stay healthy and cheerful!’, just as Caragiale used to end the postcards he sent from Berlin to Paul Zarifopol in Dresden. In the 1990s, Titi Dincă presented the religious programme Credo – the best of its kind – every Monday evening; it lasted 75 minutes and was broadcast on Channel 1 of public television, with a repeat the following morning. As I’d been a guest on his programme several times, I suggested a programme on the theme of Caragiale and Orthodoxy, featuring Alexandru Paleologu. He took up the suggestion and invited us both to a live broadcast in October 1998. It turned out to be a wonderful programme, and I hope the recording has been preserved.
On 15 October 2000, Alexandru Paleologu invited me to attend the consecration as bishop of a young archimandrite, Father Ambrozie, aged 31, who had until then been the abbot of Darvari Hermitage and later became Bishop of Giurgiu. So we went together to the Church of St Spyridon the New on Calea Șerban Vodă at the start of the Divine Liturgy preceding the ordination. I noticed then that Mrs Paleologu was familiar with the order of the service: she knelt at the four designated moments; her husband did the same during the Transubstantiation.
Alexandru Paleologu harboured a deep respect, verging on admiration, for Father Stăniloae. He wrote an article entitled ‘Father Stăniloae Removed the Scales from My Eyes’, which first appeared in the Cluj-based magazine Renașterea and was later included in the volume Father Stăniloae in the Consciousness of His Contemporaries. He was all the more pleased to hear that, in a commentary in Volume IX of the Philokalia on a writing by St Dorothea, Father Stăniloae refers to Proust’s work, stating that: “À la recherche du temps perdu does not mean a search for identical occasions, but a great repentance.”
Alexandru Paleologu differed radically from most contemporary Romanian writers and intellectuals in his attitude towards Russia, which he regarded as a European country, valuing its secular culture – Tolstoy was his favourite novelist – and its Orthodox theology. He spoke with ease – a fact evident in his volume of dialogues, Interlocuțiuni – about Kievan Rus’, Andrei Rublev, and the dispute between the Slavophiles and the Westernisers that marked the nineteenth century, as well as the distinction between the Slavophiles and the Pan-Slavists, whom many lump together; about the work of Solzhenitsyn – I saw the four volumes of The Red Wheel at his home – a writer who had brought many Western Marxist intellectuals and artists back down to earth.
Paleologu regretted that Roman Catholics had abandoned the use of Latin in the Liturgy following the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, and in an essay written in French, entitled L’Occident est à l’Est, he made the memorable observation – amply confirmed in recent years – that true Western values and refinements survive today only in Eastern Europe, in countries such as Romania or Poland…
I never had the chance to ask either Alexandru Paleologu or Archbishop Bartholomew – who had been on first-name terms ever since they met whilst serving time in the same political prison at the same time (1958–1964) – about this, by any means. I believe, rather, that it dates back to the 1950s, when, following Stalin’s death and the onset of the first ‘thaw’, Paleologu had returned to Bucharest from Câmpulung, where he had lived in hiding for several years under the name Crăifăleanu, and Deacon Bartolomeu was the Patriarchate’s librarian, under the protection of Justinian… There was a two-year age difference between them, and both were unpublished writers. It is not out of the question that they may have met in one of the private, semi-clandestine literary circles of the time. Two decades later, Alexandru Paleologu wrote an extensive article on his friend’s dramaturgy, included in the volume The Alchemy of Existence…
When Alexandru Paleologu was looking for a spiritual father, I found myself in a great dilemma, as I knew more abbots and hierarchs than parish priests, so I sought the advice of Father Anania. He thought of Father Professor Dumitru Pintea, parish priest of Mavrogheni Church, a remarkable liturgist and theologian, a choice which fully satisfied his new spiritual son. Much to the writer’s delight, the two spoke not only in the confessional.
On 5 September 2005, Alexandru Paleologu was laid to rest in Mavrogheni Church, where his body had been brought two days earlier. I recall that I, too, read a few psalms during the wake. Archbishop Bartolomeu, who had come specially from Cluj for the occasion, presided over the funeral service. After the Divine Liturgy, during which a priest was ordained, the funeral procession began, accompanied by a choir of theology students and with the archdeacon of Cluj Cathedral in the choir loft. The sermon was fitting, and I shall never forget the Archbishop’s words of profound significance: ‘Where there is love, there is no parting.’ When I left the church, I saw two or three hundred people in the courtyard. Half an hour later, the funeral procession, on its way to Bellu Cemetery, stopped in front of the Patriarchal Cathedral, where further prayers were said, and the Head of the Church, surrounded by several bishops, spoke of the character of the one who had passed away.
And I recalled that, immediately after the collapse of the communist regime, Alexandru Paleologu wrote a critical article about Patriarch Teoctist and the other members of the Synod. However, it was not long before the Patriarch and his ‘critic’ became friends, the latter sincerely praising the high-ranking hierarch. With the same sincerity with which Alexandru Paleologu once confessed to me: ‘My dear friend, in our youth, a few friends and I used to call Justinian the “Red Patriarch” and the “Soviet Patriarch”. May God forgive us! We were a bunch of fools, to put it mildly, because Justinian was the providential man who saved the Church; he was one of the great Orthodox patriarchs...”.
