Sever Voinescu: The Year of Iuliu Hossu

When, in 2023, the Parliament decided to establish the year 2025 as "The Year of Iuliu Hossu", it certainly took into account the fact that it marked 120 years since the birth and 55 years since the passing of the Greek-Catholic cardinal. "Round" numbers, which means, in good tradition, an unmissable opportunity to remember this great Romanian Christian, to recall the bright, glorious moments in our history of which he was a protagonist, but also the sad, tragic, guilty moments, which are also part of our history, through which we went after 1948. The Year of Iuliu Hossu was celebrated by always recalling, rightly, the two virtues in which the cardinal excelled not only throughout his life and – as someone said – throughout his death: faith and patriotism.

Of course, the Parliament could not foresee that 2025 would be a year in which Romanians would be tested precisely in the direction of the great virtues of Iuliu Hossu. For rational people, including Voltairians, it would have been a coincidence that we were challenged precisely on the subjects we discussed. For those more providentialist, however (I count myself among them), there is a meaning to this kind of matches, there is a subtle pedagogy that Providence applies to us. Thus, the Year of Iuliu Hossu was not only a year of evoking the destiny of a cardinal from other times, long ago, but also a year in which we worried about the present and understood that faith and patriotism, intertwined, are extremely necessary. So necessary indeed, if people of good quality do not cultivate and do not speak responsibly about faith and patriotism, giving the people the true coordinates of compatibility between them, bad quality people come, confiscate the discourse, give the people a toxin wrapped in a candy, take their minds and transform them into a large suicidal group. The year 2025 has greatly tested our faith and many of us, even many priests, have fallen for new-age scams disguised as apostles. The year 2025 has greatly tested our patriotism and many of us have fallen, ready to set the country on fire because only in this way do they believe they can appease their grievances. Thus, it turns out that this 2025 was a very suitable year to remember and talk about Iuliu Hossu. It was a therapeutic commemoration.

The entire existence of the admirable Christian patriot Iuliu Hossu reminds us how true is the observation of a former great American president: freedom exists only in a society where religious life is vibrant and the state does not forget about God. Therefore, freedom does not exist in an atheistic society nor in a theocratic society – because in atheism and in theocracies vibrant religious life is, practically, suppressed. Therefore, freedom exists only in a society where the state is aware that it cannot do just anything because, no matter how powerful it is, there is something much stronger than it.

However, beyond all this, the commemoration of Iuliu Hossu says something perhaps even more important. Sometimes, the world loves you. Other times, the world does not love you. But if you can love the world as a creation of God in any situation, even when it hates you, humiliates you, throws you into prisons and wants to tear your faith from your chest, it means that you can raise the life given to you to its true stakes.

https://www.dilema.ro/tema-saptaminii/anul-iuliu-hossu