{"id":288826,"date":"2020-08-19T00:23:15","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T21:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/basilica.ro\/?p=288826"},"modified":"2020-08-19T12:22:45","modified_gmt":"2020-08-19T09:22:45","slug":"ioan-aurel-pop-president-of-the-romanian-academy-romanians-hope-for-a-better-future-through-faith-and-trust-in-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/ioan-aurel-pop-president-of-the-romanian-academy-romanians-hope-for-a-better-future-through-faith-and-trust-in-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Ioan-Aurel Pop, President of the Romanian Academy: Romanians hope for a better future through faith and trust in the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historian and President of the Romanian Academy, Ioan-Aurel Pop, offered an interview to Q Magazine<\/a>, in which he said:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cRomanians, following their priests and holding church banners [as they sing in their national anthem – ed. note<\/em>], have managed to escape dictatorship and hope for a better future through the power of faith and trust in the Church.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Romanians, unlike other Europeans, continue to believe in God, a reality their leaders should respect when making decisions for them, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany Romanians can humbly listen to a religious hymn, they know far more Christmas carols than others, they will humbly greet you with \u2018Christ is risen!\u2019, they will commemorate their dead with the \u2018Memory eternal!\u2019 ancient hymn and cry at night, by the vigil light, their departed and their living who are too, too far away. I have not seen Westerners doing the same,\u201d the historian said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey marry in the church, cross themselves, baptize their children, confess their sins, and perform all the Church rites of passage for their dead relatives. Romanians have their houses, cars, household animals and other assets blessed by priests; during the year, they observe more feasts than others; they wish each other \u2018Happy name-day!\u2019 on their patron saint day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne could object that these are not matters of substance. Whether they are or not, they mark people\u2019s lives,\u201d said the President of the Romanian Academy.<\/p>\n

Faith and Church as civilising vectors<\/h3>\n

The faith of the people and the social involvement of the Church have resulted in the creation of public institutions based on a Christian ethos and Christian philanthropy: hospitals, schools and universities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Middle Ages, the Church was everywhere across Europe a \u2018patron\u2019 of culture. The Western universities are a creation of Church and faith,\u201d noted the President of the Romanian Academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe founder of Romanian higher education from the \u2018St Sabbas\u2019 Academy, also considered the father of Bucharest\u2019s technical university \u2018Politehnica\u2019, Transylvanian Gheorghe Laz\u0103r, was an archdeacon who completed his historical mission on the ground of the Church of Wallachia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe children\u2019s public education, literacy, reading and writing were \u2018invented\u2019 and sustained here exclusively by the Church, not by the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, the first public hospital attested by written sources on the territories inhabited by Romanians was founded in Suceava by Metropolitan Anastasie Crimca in 1619, Pop said, while numerous hospitals with names of saints testify for the role of the Church in the creation of public health institutions.<\/p>\n

And the involvement of the Church continues today: \u201cWe know that during the Covid-19 pandemic the Orthodox Church has offered aid in value of 4 million<\/a> Euros\u201d, Ioan-Aurel Pop added.<\/p>\n

The Romanians, continuators of Eastern Romanity<\/h3>\n

Then he explained the meaning of Christian Europe and emphasized that Romanians are continuators of the Christian civilization built by the Eastern Roman Empire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe name of the \u2018Byzantine\u2019 Empire is a fiction, a convention of historians established starting from the 17th century. Until its fall, in 1453, the official name of the state founded in 330 by Emperor Constantine the Great, which had its centre at the New Rome (Constantinople), was that of \u2018the Roman Empire\u2019\u201d, he mentioned.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only eastern nation which visibly continued the Roman legacy, also from the point of view of its ethnicity [of Latin origin \u2013 ed. note<\/strong>] was the Romanian people,\u201d pointed out the academician. \u201cThis fact unfolded under the protection of Byzantium and perpetuated as a \u2018Byzantium after Byzantium\u2019 [according to famous Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga \u2013 ed. note<\/strong>].\u201d<\/p>\n

That is why, suggested the President of the Academy, Romanians do not need to imitate current Western Europenity, since they are carriers of an authentic Christian European legacy whose tradition dates back to more than a millennium ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that this civilization of the Eastern Roman Empire did not remain a (success) model for Europe… is another issue. But we remain steadfast: we belong to a European civilization of magnitude which we need to know and study, not ignore and despise,\u201d added the President of the Romanian Academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho can certify that the [current \u2013 ed. note<\/strong>] Western way regarding faith is infallible, that only laicity can guarantee success and prosperity on the social, moral and spiritual levels?\u201d he rhetorically asked.<\/p>\n

Photography courtesy of the Metropolis of Cluj, Maramure\u0219 and S\u0103laj<\/p>\n

\n

Follow us on Twitter: @BasilicaNews and @BasilicaPhotos!<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for reading Basilica.ro!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historian and President of the Romanian Academy, Ioan-Aurel Pop, offered an interview to Q Magazine, in which he said:\u00a0\u201cRomanians, following their priests and holding church banners [as they sing in their national anthem – ed. note], have managed to escape dictatorship and hope for a better future through the power of faith and trust in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":288418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,22922],"tags":[20657,10386,246,525,8728],"class_list":["post-288826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultural-en","category-society","tag-ioan-aurel-pop-en","tag-orthodox-news","tag-romania","tag-romanian-academy","tag-romanian-church"],"better_featured_image":{"id":288418,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":2048,"height":1365,"file":"2020\/08\/83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o.jpg","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-890x593.jpg","width":890,"height":593,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-890x593.jpg"},"large":{"file":"83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-360x360.jpg","width":360,"height":360,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-360x360.jpg"},"1536x1536":{"file":"83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-1536x1024.jpg","width":1536,"height":1024,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o-1536x1024.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"DARIUS ECHIM","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"DARIUS ECHIMM","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":288826,"source_url":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/83107093_3198961326830250_5855706644959861344_o.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288826\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=288826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288826\/revisions\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288418\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=288826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=288826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arhiva.basilica.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=288826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}