Romania: Parliament declares 2025 “the Year of Cardinal Hossu”. Card. Muresan (Blaj), “a gesture that goes beyond the confessional dimension”

In Romania, 2025 will be “the Year of Cardinal Iuliu Hossu”, after the Romanian Parliament’s passing a law upheld by MPs Ovidiu-Victor Ganț and Silviu Vexler: the former is a Catholic and the representative of the German minority, while the latter is a Jew and the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania. It is a gesture that “has important symbolic significance, that goes beyond the confessional dimension”, as card. Lucian Mureșan, leader of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, stated in a message, in which he welcomes the Parliament’s decision. “Today’s Romanian society – the cardinal adds – needs the values that were embodied and experienced by cardinal Iuliu, and the State of Romania, by establishing a year to commemorate him, is doing a noble gesture of moral repair from the past, but, most importantly, it is spiritually investing in the present and in the future of the country”. Iuliu Hossu, the 140th anniversary of whose birth will be celebrated in 2025, was a Romanian Greek Catholic bishop, who died in 1970, after more than twenty years of forced domicile during the persecution of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, and was declared martyr and blessed in 2019. He was ordained cardinal “in pectore” by Paul VI in 1969. Because of his efforts in supporting persecuted Jews, Romania’s Jews have nominated him for the title of Righteous Among the Nations. The Romanian Parliament’s gesture makes it possible to organise nationwide cultural, diplomatic, educational and artistic events dedicated to Hossu.
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