Raportul Stat-Biserică în perioada guvernării Petru Groza (1945-1947). Biserica Greco-Catolică din România şi atitudinea Vaticanului
The relationship between State and Church during the Petru Groza government ( 1945-1947). The Greek-Catholic Church of Romania and Vatican’s attitude

Summary/Abstract: The paper above presents, in a concrete way, the general report between the communism in the period when Petru Groza governed (1945-1947) and the Greek Catholic Church, in Romania, with the more or less involvement of the Holy See or of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is also made an evidence of the antagonistic perceptions of the communism and of the Catholicism as well, from the ideological point of view, regarding the position of obedience or insubordination in the difficult relationships between State and Church. As a primary aspect, the study is concentrated on depicting the principles that guided the communists in order to develop a contradictory attitude towards the Church, to highlight the essential features of the religious politics and of the communist regimes based on the local specificities and on the description of the mechanisms and of the guileful strategies through which the Romanian communists, taking advantage of the international context, with ability and agility, succeeded in winning the people’s trust, consolidating their legitimacy and, eventually, in obeying the Greek Catholic Church to their desiderates. As a final reference, our interest is concerned on an analysis of the motivations that the Petru Groza government had in pleading for putting the accent on the historical evolution of the conflict between the Orthodox adepts and the Catholics, but we have also observed the concrete measures adopted by the Romanian communist regimes towards the Greek Catholic Church and the manner in which the representatives of the nunciature from Bucharest (Andrea Cassulo and his successor Gerald Patrick O’Hara) reacted to the rough actions of the communist government.

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