Ifigenia, for example, who is to be back on the street

Following the harrassments of the DGPASC Brasov against our foundation, because we had „dared“ to proceed against the president of the Brasov district, Aristoteles Cancescu, due to violation of his responsibilities and because he was not prepared to answer an official letter within 30 days according to law, we had to accept harrassing never-ending inspections in dictatorship-style.

During these inspections the “Processe verbal” had partially been falsified and the children had been fomented against the president of the foundation behind his back.

Thereupon we have sent a package of 30 kgs of evidence documents to the National Agency of Child Protection, evidence, which the “inspectors” of our foundation had refused to verify. In Bucharest the acceptance of the package was refused either, so that we were forced to personally deliver this evidence once again to the secretary of state in Bucharest in the presence of our lawyer.
 
Now new illegal, even criminal pressure against us is adopted by the DGPASC Brasov. The secretary of the district, Mariana Tiharau, who – in the same office - has been harrassing our foundation and libelling the priest Father Don Demidoff for 17 years, is member of the Securitate (Romanian information service) and has been trying to extinguish our foundation from the very beginning. Her function allows her to do as she pleases.


Already in the first years under her direction a falsified document of the Romanian security service against Demidoff came about, personally undersigned by the president of the secret service (published in Demidoff’s book “The Priest of Thorns”, which will be published in Romanian shortly): When after the revolution in 1990 it was quite natural for us to break up the tyrannic, ideologically communist practices concerning the children’s homes, where boys and girls had to grow up even in groups seperated into age in different homes, were partially kept like animals and chained to their beds, we were suspicious immediately, because according to our pedagogic idea boys and girls grew up and lived together like in a family.

Therefore this Mrs. Tiharau called the Father “perverse” back then. Her attempt to already then close our home did not succeed, because we were able to defeat that by a court proceedings. Well, there are still bars at the public homes and the children are allowed to leave their home with a permit only. There are public homes, which are still in disastrous condition, but do not have to obey the legal standards.

Certificates for qualified personnel are easily issued by the Department of Legal Protection for Children and Young Persons, but woe betide us, if our foundation is not able to find qualified staff, because there actually is none. Instead, we consider ourselves happy that we have staff, which have been working and living with us for 15 years and more and therefore due to their practice and experience with a Christian pedagogic are far more qualified than people, who at their schools and universities still learn the old doctrine just dressed up with new labels.

According to the re-integration act existing for years institutionalized children are to be re-integrated to their relatives up to the 4th grade. Many of these children have ended up on the street   a g a i n. But nobody is worried about that, because street children are not statistically listed in Brussels, but the institutionalized children only. Of course it is welcome, if the state makes efforts to re-integrate children back to their families. The law, however, does not intend to re-integrate them to the street.

Thus the authority of Child Protection is looking for the families of the children behind our back and without informing us. As in Romania it is easy to intimidate the affected by pressure and citation of laws, declarations are forced, which are false and threatening for the children, who have been in our house for 17 years and actually do not want to go back to their families, not least because they are strangers to each other.

Thus it happened to Ifigenia the other day. Already two years ago the mother had declared before the family court that she was not her child, because she had been raped back then. She never had visited her child, never sent a Christmas card or even made a telephone call. 17 years ago she had delivered “her” child to the mother of the raper, who then had brought it to Cincu and laid on the stairs of our house.

Ifigenia attends the high school like all the other big girls, whose cost are not inconsiderable for us, alone the daily transport to the next bigger town and back.

Well, one night !!! Ifigenia’s mother suddenly stood in front of the door and wanted to talk to „her“ daughter. Because she lived in the poorest circumstances, too poor to feed her children, and because we had to put her off to the next morning, she spent the night in the near park. She had been so heavily put under pressure to finally visit her daughter.

This encounter just brings shivers to a human with a heart. Ifigenia: “Why did you declare before court that I am not your daughter?” The mother makes excuses and wriggles for an answer.

Her performance in our house was stagy, hysterical. Of course, the ladies of the Child Protection, who foment these mothers from the background, are not present at these confrontations and avoid the psychological conflicts, as well as they are not interested either, how the children feel, when they end up on the street  a g a i n   by their measures.

We had already banned the employee of the Child Protection Brasov, Blanduzia Radu, from our house once before. Because she promised improvement we raised the prohibition and on a “proces verbal” we dictated her our point of view.

Actually, she has not improved. She is the enforcer of her boss Tiharau and there is one aim only, i. e. to close our home, because we are inconvenient and because for us the interests of the children living with us have priority. The communist doctrine is mightily coming back, even if it is dressed up with new labels. At school uniforms have been introduced once again now, like in the times of the dictator.

For my children I have pushed through that they do not have to wear the uniform. For behind that is the sick idea of collectivism, where the personality of humans is unimportant, contrary to our idea of individualism of children and humans anyway. Often I am frightened, how the children once again adopt the sick communist attitude and bring it into our home.

Well, Ifigenia’s mother and Ifigenia herself were relieved that they could continue to live apart. We, however, are continued to be harrassed and the responsible commissioners in Brussels shrug their shoulders and regularly refer us to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, where Romania already is the front-runner of pending legal proceedings due to permanent violation of human rights anyway.

Now the Agency of Child Protection has sent us a „Convention de colaborare”, which is undersigned with three signatures and which hardly allows space for a cooperation on a partnership basis.

The cooperation with the current communists in Brasov looks like that we have 26 additional obligations and of course have to provide for the money for this organization all alone, while the state often allows itself plenty of time for transferring the official scholarships to the students. And rage is surging within us, because we are sworn to install an informing system among the children and staff here and to give written reports on the results.

The ideology of communism is sick and perverse. Brussels is rearing a member, which will act as a virus in the “Union”. There are Romanians in the European Parliament. It would have been the duty of Romania to establish a law allowing Europeans to even run for a post up to district level. Nobody has raised his voice, when this did not happen and allegedly was postponed to 2012. Why are the Romanians allowed to stay in the European Parliament then? The lesson the Irish, who are actually obliged to thankfulness, have taught Europe by their refusal, is applaudable and will hopefully have a signal effect on other countries as well.

Brussels takes decisions according to opportunity, because they need Romania for other reasons, and therefore Romania gets away with everything and the common man in the European street will rub his eyes in disbelief, when realizing what is coming up to him from the Balkan.

Actually the corruption here and the permanent misuse of European money should especially in Germany and elsewhere - where the new poverty gets more and more people down - make the people go to the barricades. But in preemptive obedience to corruption Brussels has already let it been known that there will be no measures or hedge clauses and that the reform deadlock will be broken finally. Romania’s accession to Europe is a disappointment, the European delegate of the CSU (Christian Social Union) Markus Ferber says.

Well, while the little dictators position themselves in every nook and corner, even try to manipulate the consequences of the results just like on the local elections, we “stand pat”, if it is about the rights of the children, especially the instutionalized ones.

We will make sure that people like these “ladies” Tiharau and Blanduzia Radu have to give up their offices finally, by permanently applying moral pressure and even publishing it. Father Don Demidoff writes his columns in the Romanian daily newspaper “SibiuStandard” and is not afraid of going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg either, like he has already done it in the matter of torture in the Romanian prisons.
 
But that cost a lot of money, too. And while the Romanian state is trying to dry out our foundation by a terror-like bureaucracy and by not transferring the scholarships for our students in time, we all the more build on our donators who have been loyal to us for 17 years. In this situation we appeal to you, please donate. Donate quickly and big-heartedly, in order that our children may remain in safety. 

This summer we are facing almost insoluble problems.
Our account of charity:
 
www.SibiuStandard.ro

wwepeschedondemidoff.com

http://ww.depeschedondemidoff.com      www.businessportal24.com

God leaves the destruction of the earth
to the humans themselves.
 
The lately diluvial occurrences all over the world, recently in America, where complete houses just “have swum away” with the torrential flood, remind to the happenings at the times of Noah’s Ark. God instructed Noah to build an ark. Even today we face the biggest floods of the history of earth. But what is going to happen, if God instructed the Noah of 2010 to once again build an ark in order to save a few.
 
The Ark anno Domini 2010
 
And God decided to once again teach the humans the same lesson.
God was tired of watching, how humans behaved, their depravity, their violence, their avariciousness and vindictiveness. Their society of possessing against the laws of nature.

Thus God decided to extinguish mankind like he had done once again a long, long time ago. But before that was bureaucracy, the rule of bureaucracy of mankind.

He said to the Noah of the year 2010: Noah, build an ark made of cedar wood once again, just like back then: 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high. I am going to bring a second flood upon the earth, for mankind does not have learned something new. You Noah 2010, however, go into the ark with your wife, your sons and their wives and take two of all animals, a male and a femal each. In six months I will send the big rain.

Noah groaned loudly. Is that really necessary again? Once again 40 days of rain and 150 uncomfortable days on the water and all the inconvenient animals on board and all that without TV.

But Noah 2010 conformed to God’s will and promised to do everything just as God had instructed him. Six months later dark clouds gathered and it began to rain.

Noah, God called, Noath 2010, where is your ark? Noah sadly looked to heaven and answered: God, have mercy upon me. But God once again asked: Where is Noah’s Ark. Noah dried his tears and said: God, what are you doing to me?
Then Noah began the building of the ark. First he applied for a building license at the county. Because they thought he wanted to build an extravagant sheep shelter, they criticized the unusual form, because they could not believe at all that he was building a ship. But even more the description of the measures caused confusion, because they did not know anymore what a cubit was.

Therefore an architect was entrusted with the draft of a new plan. But then the building application was refused for now, because they claimed that a wharf in a housing area was not permissible according to the masterplan.
Noah 2010, however, found an appropriate commercial property and then the real problems appeared.

It began with the question, whether the ark had to have fire-retardent doors, a sprinkler system and a fire water tank. The public officials did not believe Noah’s remark that in case of emergency there would be enough water around, they even mocked him. When Noah explained them that their would be a great deal of water, more than all people would need for fire fighting he was summoned to a doctor of the county hospital. The doctor meaningfully asked him what could be the purpose of a shipbuilding on land, far away from any waters. Then Noah actually got a phone message by the district government that he might build a ship, but had to arrange for its transport to the next river himself. He could not count on the building of a flood barrier.

Even another official of this authority called him in order to help: he could apply for a wharf allowance at the European Union in Brussels, the application has to be presented eight fold and in three official languages.

Now his neighbor flashes into action. He files an action of legal protection at the administration court. The neighbor has a wholesale trade for animal food. He considers the project to be a large-scale publicity campaign. The “shipbuilding” would just serve to alienate his customers and to ruin him.

Noah explains his neighbor that he does not want to sell anything at all. The neighbor does not believe him and the administration court allows itself plenty of time.

The next blow was the search for cedar wood. Lebanon cedar is not allowed to be imported anymore. Thereupon Noah 2010 looked for construction timber in the woods, but he was prohibited to cut down trees due to nature conservation and climate protection. A clause of the county wood law.

It might be done, if Noah proved a compensatory reforestation.
Noah wrote: Soon there will be no nature anymore and due to that the planting of trees was absolutely absurd. Once again he was summoned to the doctor of the county hospital. But as time was short, Noah employed carpenters, who promised to get the necessary timber themselves, but first of all they wanted to elect a works committee. This works committee, however, demanded for a labor contract for wooden shipbuilding on shore without any contact to water. Noah was in despair, refused and thus a strike vote and a strike came about.

Oh God, do you actually know how much money workmen demand today? How shall I pay for that, he sighed to heaven. But time was short. He therefore began to collect the animals. At the beginning everything was easy and especially the to two ants were fine. But then he had to begin the dressage of the tigers and the sheep, who Noah had to convince of a peaceful stay. That, however, irritated the local society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, which critized the keeping non-appropriate to the species.

Thus the neighbor again appeared with a complaint claiming that Noah was opening a zoo, what would also be extremly bad for his business.  

Dear God, Noah groaned, could you at least find me a permission for the European animal protection transport regulation. He was just reading page 22 of this form and poring over the destination of the transport. And, dear God, did you know that antlered animals are not allowed to be transported at all during rutting season? And even deers, moose and the common ox do not think of anything else but their drive.

By the way, Noah continued asking, where can I find the mandatory “Callipepla california”, you know the California quail, and the “Lathamus discolor”? I have not yet found the swift parrot, either. Are you aware of the fact that I have to observe 43 regulations of the European Single Market Animal Protection Act, especially for the transport of the rabbits. He now has called in lawyers, in order to have made out if these rules also go for hares.

By the way, Noah asked God once again, can you contrive matters so that the ark is declared a foreign-flag ship? It would be easier to get the permission then, because the ark would only stay in the area of the German coastal waters. And, he asked God, please intervene at Greepeace, because they have declared that liquid manure, excrements and dung are not allowed to be disposed of in the water.

God, I am in despair.

What was possible back then, is not possible today anymore. And on top of all this is next:

The supreme commander of the Navy got in touch with Noah and demanded a map of the area to be flooded. Noah sent him a globe painted blue all over.
Then the tax investigators showed up. They suspected Noah of planning his tax flight.

And he fell into despair and gave up before his God. Shall I, he asked, not rather bring along a lawyer to the ark?
Noah was in great despair and had resigned. Suddenly the incessant rain stopped and the sun began to shine. And there was a wonderful big rainbow. Then Noah looked up and smiled.

Dear God, you are not going to destroy the earth anymore, are you?! But God answered: “I do not worry about that anymore, your administration will make for that much faster.”

Shortly the Romanian version of the „Priest of Thorns“ will be published, longer by 300 pages, however, and full of ocurrences since 2005.

Translation and realization were extremely hard and needed three years, as said before.

I herewith communicate the closing words of the Romanian version to the readers of the “depesche”

Closing words

Before printing of this edition in the Romanian language I would like to say this concludingly: I have added many things in Romanian language to the German edition. For 17 years now I try to serve the people in Romania, especially the still oppressed, those who are still in fear, to serve the poor and the condemned, the tortured in the Romanian prisons, especially to serve the disenfranchised and abandoned children.

The people is helpless against corruption top down. Dictatorship of bureaucracy and over-regulation right down to the last detail of human co-existence actually disclose the ideology of communism with new labels only.

The mainly humanitarian helpers and organizations have hopelessly left the country, only few have stayed. Especially private foundations are humiliated by an administrative machine, which eliminates a modern, successful education. Therefore they even cash in millions of Euros from the European Union, 593 millions of Euros are to be spent for social projects by 2013.

Being a private foundation we do not get anything of that. On the contrary, if we are not able to pay gas and electricity on time, we are cut off immediately. If we pay the taxes too late, a high rate of interest is surcharged, which is almost impossible to escape from. Does the money actually arrive or does its use mainly remain untold. Does this belief in money not encourage many parents to abandon their children? “You will certainly find a home for them.”

Who, however, like me dares to look over the shoulders of the responsible and to ask questions is attacked with an inspection resembling a declaration of war. The results are manipulated, counterevidence is refused. In consequence there is no chance to appropriately dedicate myself to just a single child. The inspectors try to set the children against the priest. “Why do you have to pray three times a day?”

Some years ago the so-called re-integration act was invented. Nobody knows, how many children have consequently ended up on the street again, because they were forced to return to their relatives up to the forth degree and then were sent away again. By this means, indeed, the statistics of institutionalized children were adjusted, as demanded by Brussels. The street children themselves are of course no longer included in the statistics.

Now we are facing a new generation of abandoned children in Romania. Thousands of Romanian parents forsake their children and look for work in Western Europe, they are said to be 3 millions of emigrants. More than 100.000 abandoned children are currently growing up here without parents.

The cases of these children committing suicide are increasing. The ten-year-old Razvan S. hanged himself. The whole European press reported about that, but nothing happened. One sensation of many in this world: astonishing and quickly forgotten and Europe keeps silent. Many of the abandoned children get depressive or become criminal. Even if they have found an asylum at their grandmother’s and get a money transfer from abroad even now and then.

Romania and Bulgaria have the most orphans in Europe. Nothing, nothing at all has changed. The misery of these children is administered and the jobs in the administration are increasing more and more. Jobs executed by people of questionable qualification. Thus misery is administered and the European bureaucracy even teaches the neo-communists.

Officially in Romania 25 % of the people live below poverty line. An average monthly wage amounts to 350 Euros. The cost of living are increasing permanently, the Western trusts Metro, Plus, Penny and all the rest of them exhaust the people with their high prices, which are above those of the Western countries. For starvation wages the shop assistants have to keep the consumer temples open even Sundays.

I have been living here for 17 years. Until today I cannot understand the cold ruling in the families, the easiness of mothers, who just deliver their children to orphanages, and how unscrupulously people separate from their own children. Of course they have learned that under Ceausescu, gave them to orphanages in order to have them educated in his sense.

And this callous handling of children and of humans generally still characterizes the Romanian society.

This callousness and is supported by every financial assistance from Brussels to the mafia-like structures here (while we being the troublemakers are dried up and the private donations are running dry, because Brussels is going to fix it).

How many ministers have been accused due to corruption! But how many have been sentenced? I did not find one of them in the Romanian prisons, but instead the gypsies, who for the theft of a chicken (because the family with many children was starving) have to serve a sentence of seven years. There the hatred of this society is fostered and the next bigger criminal action is planned for the time after dismissal. Brussels was not interested in the evidence of torture, “they could not interfere”.

And that’s that. Due to these mafia-like structures everybody from top to bottom thinks of nothing but himself.

Callousness and hatred, envy and brutality, criminality and contempt for mankind till road traffic reveal a society, which will not overcome indoctrination and atheism for a long time, even not in the next generations. Even 18 years after the so-called revolution the mangers of the nation serve the personal needs of the rulers only. And the people has to watch the same pigs again and again making use of these mangers.

The current president, Traian Basescu, who at a sudden denies his communist past, admits that even the communists of today want to “betray the people”. The secret files of the president cannot be found anymore. What a coincidence!
Our foundation had to carry on more than 100 lawsuits in the interest of the tortured and the children.

In more than 90 % of the cases we won in the last resort and law was even carried out against two ministers. This of course resulted in new harrassment and the permanent tapping of our lines.

Even if my health is broken, I nevertheless will stay with the disenfranchised and be a shelter for them. I appeal to the people of good will, who really love their country Romania, to help me, so that I am able to continue helping.

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

Writer Mircea Cartarescu sees a sharp division in his home country Romania:

"The difference between these two Romanias - the one democratic, the other governed by powerful networks - is striking and shows that our democracy is not functioning properly.

Like in Russia, a system of oligarchies is superimposed on our democratic system, and this system poses a threat to the well being of the general public. This is not only because the oligarchies are rich and have close ties wit h politicians, and it is also not just because owning the media allows them to wield influence. What is dangerous is the combination of these three levers of power, which makes them extremely powerful people and puts them and their clans practically beyond the reach of the law.

Our country today is governed by an intertwined network of criminals, conmen and speculators who back in the dark years of the 1990s split up Romania and divided it among themselves. ... If we want to achieve true democracy, it is the duty of the citizens to control the spread of this villainous system."

Comment by Father Don:

I absolutely agree to that. Every day we have to feel the effects of this schizophrenic system, because we are doing humanitarian work. In these days our home once again had been switched off electricity, because we paid one day too late. If Cartarescu however believes that "it is the duty of the citizens to control the spread of this villainous system", he vehemently misj udges the feelings of these citizens, for they still remain in a state of fear, while the villainous system terrifies them. After 17 years Romania I do not cherish any hope anymore.

Father Don Demidoff
www.depeschedondemidoff.com  / dondemidoff@web.de

The ideology of communism is alive Part II

Do not forget: 20 years ago children were wasting away like animals in public homes

The hate, Marx and Lenin preached against Christianity, riots in Romania still today. There are public inspectors who come into a home founded and operated by a priest and instigate the children against him behind his back ? in 2008. ?Why do you have to pray three times a day? Why do you not have a boyfriend, a girlfriend yet (they mean sex)? Do you get meat every day? If you have misconducted, they are not allowed to punish you. Are you punished? Do you get enough pocket money?? We had to ban the social assistant Ignat from the house, because she brought hate and trouble. It was just 20 years ago that in public homes children were chained and wasting away naked like animals. We still have these pictures not only before our eyes. Now they want to tell a Catholic priest how practised family education looks like and demand him to make up a list recording when the children ?interned? in the home have contact with which ones outside the home. It is suspect that in our home windows and doors are wide open, for children have to ask for a ?permit?, if they want to leave the home. When will we have to make up list for recording how often and when a child goes to the bathroom? Or maybe lists recording how often the children fart? When I founded the Casa Don Bosco in 1991 and took in boys and girls together like in a usual family (which is allegedly promoted today), the district secretary already acting then (i. e. more than 18 years in office) called me perverse.

The empire of evil, of the devil, continues to rule. And he remains in power. For the fight against religion is the ABC of communism. The teachers of this ABC still want to keep the people suffer. Priests, bishops and order people were brought to working camps and tortured to death. Their bones came into the open again in a shoe box. Churches were alienated and changed to museums for atheism. Believers were discriminated and harassed.

The devil, who is also called atheism today, is alive and burgeons. As we have restored the church in Iacobeni from own resources (investment of 100.000 Euros) and therewith have reactivated it for a new prayer and service life, we are covered with lies and libels by the ?Department of culture and historical monuments?. Its head Ovidiu Calborean declares in the local press: ?Don Bosco has desecrated the church.? He does not even know that Don Bosco is not alive anymore, but has been in heaven since 1888. But even Catholic saints are ruthlessly offended by atheism. People from all over the world leave words of enthusiasm and appreciation in the guestbook of the church. But certainly there is no atheist among them. In the whole district of Sibiu there were boards pointing to the historic churches, which in most of the cases are not in use anymore. It certainly is a coincidence that such a board was not installed in the village of Iacobeni.

Now you may say that it is easy for me to talk, for I was not subject to the pressure of the system and had not come before the country was opened. No, it is not easy for me to talk, for I know how many enemies I have made in this country, because I fight against the lie, because I want to bring the truth to light finally and because priests and bishops, who have sold themselves to this system, have to finally disappear to their private lives. Threats like ?Go to Iraq, there is a bomb waiting for you? or ?We have digged a hole for you on the church yard? are the order of the day.

And you never may forget the luminous figures, who went to the underground, to the prisons and to death for their belief. Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary, Aloijzije Sepinac in Croatia, Josef Slipyi in the Ukraine und many others, even in Romania.

Being Christians, we must not collaborate with the empire of the devil, not even make the least concessions. Not in those days, not today. For the devil unscrupulously pulls out all the stops. The devil uses the weakness and imperfections of people. He pays, bribes and he flatters. He deceives, blackmails and beats, he rewards, threatens, corrupts and as said before, most of all he lies. He lies like a trooper.

And the Romanian children once again do not learn anything else but the internalization of these bugs. Who, like me, persistently tries to change this mentality, is a stranger, a trouble maker, who has to be libeled, like it has sufficiently happened in the Romanian media, even if he has obtained a whole collection of judgments against these libelers. When do they finally stop to dogmatize the children and the people, when do they finally take this superstition from them? When will they finally stop to force the children to learn the orthodox catechism? The political scientiest Pirvulescu clearly says: ?The Romanian politics is submissively dependent on the orthodox church.? People still make the sign of the cross due to superstition, when there is a thunderstorm, whereas there is nothing to say against the sign of the cross itself. Still a child is not allowed to be in fresh air before its baptism. Still women are banned from visiting the church during their period. That is worse than deepest middle age. These mentalities allow that the Romanians still follow the communists respectively are still in fear of them. Smaranda Enache, the president of the ?Liga for Europe?, has carefully examined the religious education in public schools. She has verified ?messages of violence?, ?excessive ritualism? and religious ?intolerance?. That is the stuff the next generation is made of. Thus it is not a surprise that my attempts to exert civil influence on the children and to teach them the rules of democracy during the recent 17 years have been in vain and are ruined in a single religious lesson. For years I have been trying to point out to the adolescent girls that the female cycle is not a disease, how they call it, but a sound and normal process of the female sex. As meanwhile I get angry, when they continue to say, that they are ?sick?, they now tell me ?I am sick, I am on my period.?

Many issues had to be named in order to call a spade a spade: the sick schools, alcoholized teachers, like the alcohol addict teacher Moldovan of the elementary school in Iacobeni, who in spite of many claims even at the school inspectorate has not been dispensed from teaching. Often he does not even come to school, because he is drunk, but demands his pupils to have a sweat suit for the sport lessons. For some parents in the village a bitter pill, because they do not even have hardly enough money to feed their children. Still you may buy grades and exams.

Too many, who still indoctrinate children and adults or have actively practiced the persecution of Christians, are at the switch points again, in parliament, in the authorities, with stolen capital in the economy and in influential positions. They sneeringly show us still today which power they have. They change their membership books three times, four times, just like it seems to be opportune, like the mayor Cori in our village Iacobeni or the imperishable Securitate lady Mariana Tiharau in Brasov.

If Romania shall, wants to recover, the poison of dictatorship, the poison of the ideology, most of all the poison of the lie has to be eliminated. There is one single antibiotic only: that is the truth, the truth and once again the truth. If the simple gypsy, father of a family, has to disappear behind bars, because he has stolen two chickens for his hungry children, confesses and cannot afford a defense lawyer, even this is diabolic, becauses the others, the liers and deceivers, the everlasting oppressors are even rewarded for their lies.

And the children watch that with bright eyes. They once again just learn to survive in this sick system. These are their examples. Not a stupid priest like me, who has come from the West 17 years ago in order to bring the message of charity of Jesus. No, my children say, here in Romania it is said ?Do good and harvest bad?. These are sayings they internalize. Diabolic, as said before. Woe to the children of these children. And all this in the middle of Europe!


Pater Don Demidoff

Part I  Friday, March 21, 2008

The ideology of communism is alive

False democracy

Almost two decades after the so-called breakdown of the communist Eastern Bloc we are confronted with many questions in Romania.

Has the world actually come to democracy, free market economy and liberalism now after this breakdown? Have we won peace now?

No, neither we have won peace nor the massive damages the ideology of communism has caused for the people have been remedied even rudimentally. The floodgates have been opened to Islam by the decadence of the West and the false democracy of the East, even in the Western democracies, a religion, which is dictatorial and repressive and keeps people in bondage, too. (Remind the claim against me at the Anti-Discrimination-Commission in Bucharest.) And the Marxist-leninistic virus of Mr. Ceausescu continues to remain deep in the innermost of the people, not only in Romania.The disease of alcoholism of men and women not only in Russia, but even here (woe to those who seclude themselves).

The high rate of abortion (more children are aborted than born, in the Western democracies as well) are obvious indicators of ill societies and decadence.

The Balkan virus has massively carried corruption to the European ?Union?, ?national wealth? has been transferred to private hands and the moral of Western managers to shovel million-wages to each other and to not pay taxes on them is the same crime, here and there.

At the same time they encash subventions of millions of Euros in order to then close factories and to re-open them in low-wage countries. And the majority of people sinks into poverty. Here and there.

It is not really a surprise that communism remains alive not only here, but now in Germany, nota bene in the re-united Germany, through the back-door moves into parliament again. The ?Left?, how they call themselves, former communists from the so-called democratic Germany, have got together in this party. They are allowed to loudly confess that the wall and the confined people had been a blessing for the communist society and shortly they will be socialized and able to govern. Once again people are taken in by a pack of lies. Masses can be manipulated. Already Hitler knew that and all dictators knew it.

Corruption in the former or still-communism is the basis of public structure. Who in Romania dares to file an action against members of the new nomenclature (e. g. the president of the district council of Brasov Cancescu), will get to feel the hate and the wrath of the still-communists. Who dares that 18 years after the so-called revolution, is covered with harrassment, controls and false reports. They work hand in hand and do not hurt each other. There are gleams of hope. Few. The president of the district council Martin Bottesch actually has apologized in the name of his authority after a claim of the author of this article. He should be re-elected. Those people are rare in this country. In the same breath, however, the secretary of the district council of Sibiu and president of the commission of child protection, Iordan Nicola, went as far as to claim that he just acts in the interest of the tortured children, whereas he recently had seriously humiliated an incest child, i. e. a handicapped one (by the way just like the priest as well), so that the child has been horribly suffering from the additionally caused stigmatization till today. You have to wonder anyway, where from these communists take the educational and psychological competence to conduct a commission of child protection. And if you want to identify a communist you just have to watch his behaviour towards a priest, especially a Catholic one. For they had sent those to the torture chambers two decades ago as well, if they were not prepared to renunciate Catholicism.

Of course, the problems of a change of Stalinist states are enormous. The virus against the economic, social, political and legal interests of the people cannot be eliminated for a long time yet. The resulting mentality will deeply remain inside the people and be inextinguishable for many generations. I see that in observing the children, whom I have tried to give a democratic-Christian, individual education for 17 years now. The virus further bred by school, street, authorities and surroundings is so strong and cannot be wiped out for many generations. A sickly indoctrination in the true sense of the word. You could fill a whole book with all the examples of this indoctrination and the communist behavior of the children, who haven even never known Ceausescu himself. And these children will pass down these evil morals and standards of conduct to their own children. If now at school a uniform is introduced violently, and the children who refuse to wear it are delivered to the gate keeper (why to the gate keeper then?), this proves what kind of persons the teachers are. They cling to collectivism and do not know that God does not know collectivism, but only and exclusively the individual human.

The devil is the creator of collectivism. It is just the drive of the devil of humans against humans. Ceausescu, Stalin, Hitler were devils. And what have these devils left to us? Dirt. Just dirt. Collective dirt.

This mental, social and moral dirt cannot be removed for a long time yet. Ceausescu and his Elena had been put up against the wall in faith of the dirt being removed therewith. But there has remained much more dirt than people had been made believe. The two of them had been eliminated quickly without a constitutional court proceeding. There was a great haste, because the dirt of others could have been covered up.

The state, however, has to respect the dignity of man, even to encourage it. This dignity is inviolable, not for sale. Even the atheistic dictatorships of the 20th century are not able to change that and no inhuman religions either.

The empire of evil has actually not yet gone down. Those who are in power now, do not want that anyway. They do not come to terms with the dictatorship of communism. It is the dictatorship of the lie, which has been cultivated till today. And the lie, which is controlled top down, has taken possession of the generation of the children as well, in fact quite apparently. They lie without good cause and they do it permanently. They do not know, why they lie, but they do it. And if they do not have a lie available immediately, they gain time by the rhetorical question: ?Me?? You ask them something and look into their eyes and they stereotypically ask: ?Me?? And they whisper on the quiet like the judges in the courtrooms do behind their documents. I tell you, a whole book could be filled with this evil dirt.

Part II of this column will be published on Friday, the 28th of March, 2008, on page 5 of this newspaper.

The ideology of communism is alive

Exorcism comes back into vogue

When I came to Romania in 1991 I did not believe in the existence of the devil anymore. I belonged to the so-called enlightened theologians. Then I came to Transylvania: the land of Dracula and of the devils? Dracula actually is not what he is like in the myths. But the devils in Transylvania? Where are they?

I have experienced them and still do it today. Maybe the Transylvanian soil is especially predestined, with its many rumors and most of all its superstition, which is well maintained and cultured by the national church?

Transylvania means between the woods. Have the devils fled to here? Is life especially diabolically good here?

As a matter of fact, many people here seem to be possessed by the devil, by evil. Knowing, how many conflicts and hate alone is in many families, how much strangeness between many family members. Just the question before Romanian courts: ?Are you at enmity with the claimant, with the defendant?? How much lovelessness in this wonderful nature of Romania. After all the devil has to live here?!

In a godforsaken village I saw a child so beastlike screaming in front of a hut that I actually wanted to run away. It was not normal screams of a child, it was abnormal.

A man from this house called for me. He was the father. He said: Father, the child is possessed by the devil. We do not know what to do anymore. She screams night and day. We even cannot sleep anymore. We have been to several doctors. Please help us, please.

For decades I had not prayed the Catholic exorcism anymore. I did not know the praying formulas anymore. I hesitated to approach the child and the nearer I came the more she screamed and struggled. I was really stunned. I kept a ?secure? distance and began to pray, first murmuring to myself, then getting louder and louder until I had almost drowned out the child with my voice.

I got out my small pocket stole and prayed, no, adjured the devil with my words: Satan, Lord of Hell, I command you, vanish from this child. As I said, I did not know the formulas anymore, thus I repeated this sentence again and again with the sign of the cross and constantly blessed the child: Satan, Lord of Hell, I demand you in the name of heaven, the father, the son and the holy spirit, vanish from this child. The voice of the child became lower and lower and lower. Thus I could approach her further and further. She became silent, more silent, until I could carry her in my arms, she shivered and stammered to herself. Then I carried her to the hut and the child began to smile. This was one of the happiest moments in my life.

Exorcism, the casting out of devils, is increasing again. Where mind and doctors are lost, priests are increasingly called on. The Vatican has an exorcist as well. His name is Don Gabriele and he even is the ?senior? exorcist. Padre Gabriele does not regard the devil to be a fairy tale figure, but daily routine. In 21 years he has executed more than 70.000 exorcisms. Sometimes he has 15 to 16 daily. Padre Gabriele keeps his feet on the ground. He is by no means a crackpot. He has not only studied theology, but law as well. He has written books, which have been translated into 21 languages, even into Japanese.

And he does not even treat his own people with kid gloves. ?In the Vatican, the center of the Catholics?, he says, ?there are satanic sects. They are everywhere, even if you do not see them.? This reminds me of a phrase of a moral theologian of my years of study: ?Where God builds a cathedral, the devil builds a chapel beside it?, he often told us students.

There is no perfect or ever so pious protection against demons and the spiritual netherworld. Even the great mother Teresa had herself exorcized by Father Gabriele during her last years of life. Nobody is immune to the devil, he says. And everyone knows about daily temptations.

The exorcist this states as well: Theoretically even a pope may be obsessed. If even saints may be obesessed, why ever not the holy father? But now he gets a bit frightened at his own words after all, the good Father. And he quickly adds: the holy father is guarded and protected by an army of guardian angels.

I will wait for my children in heaven

A Romanian makes the sign of the cross many times during his life: on the street, in the church, in the car and everywhere. Is that a sign of particular religiousness? But what about the religious practice, the realization of the Gospel in everyday life of a Christian?

Many make three, four signs of the cross in a row up beyond all recognition. Would it not be more dignified to make it only once, thoughtfully and slowly?
Or do these awkward signs of the cross still result from communism, when you better had to hide your religiousness as well as your personal opinion?

The ideology of communism is still flourishing in this country. There are the fathers and children and grandchildren of the nomenclature, who are still in power today, just with other labels. They are the new atheists, the neo-communists. They cannot deny their attitude, in spite of the wonderful labels of neo-liberalism. These days my children had been asked behind me by inspectors of the national commission of child protection, why they have to pray three times a day. The engagement against God is still obvious. Uniforms are to be introduced at school. Uniforms as the sign of the evil, communist collectivism. The human is a number in the collective. God we do not need. As God does not want the collective human, God wants the individual. The individual, loving and approving God.

Atheism is gaining ground again, in Germany the succession party of the Eastern German communists, “Die Linke” (The Left), moves into the parliaments, and in Romania it had not yet disappeared at all. They still wish for the crusade, which causes any religions to vanish from all over the world. We do not need a God, they declare. As it used to be they regard religion to be a harmful poison, which has to be eradicated. They work demagogically by half-truths and defamations and denounce people, who believe in God, to be stupid and evil. What did they do to the priests during the times of the evil “conducator”, who were not prepared to convert to the orthodox state church.

Thus you have to ask yourself, from which fountain the hate of the new atheists is fed. In a time, when Islam is becoming more radical and more fundamental all over the world, now atheism shall be the old and new answer? They all want to be the benefactors of humanity: the fundamentalists, the atheists, the suicide bombers, the gurus, the left and the right theologians, the liberation theologians, the Taliban assassinators.

If human denies God or even abolishes him, human will also abolish human. For 17 years I have been living in the post communist Romania, for 17 years I have experienced the ideology and its consequences for humans, yes, everything is still handed down to the children. With horror I have to notice a mentality of our children, which to me being a “Western”  seems so strange. Children, who have never known Ceausescu, children, whom I have tried to teach an education based on freedom and partnership during the last 17 years, still show symptoms of atheism and nihilism.

They have not yet learned to communicate, to inform, because the adults still not do it either. They refuse a certain level of civilization and behave like people, who have never heard of table manners. 10 generations will not be enough to get this poison out of the people. Hitler, Stalin and Ceausescu did not love the people, it even did not matter to them to exterminate them. Atheism abolishes God, in order that human can abolish human. The depraved communist ideology does not know humans loved and redeemed by God. They kill, gas, shoot, starve people or let them work themselves to death in detention camps.

There is such a dark country of dictatorship still today: North Korea with its atheistic, communist dictatorship. The dictators there have a million people starved, hundreds of thousands are kept like animals in working camps. And the mental and physical torture still practiced in Romanian prisons originate from the same perverse ideology: contempt for humankind. Of what value is a human, these fools ask.

Atheistic ideas still cause misery and sorrow in this world, even in Romania. If human does not get his dignity from God or if he is deprived of his dignity by traitors of God, there is sorrow and war in this world and hunger and misery. Those who define the human by his serviceableness or his loyalty to a party or unconditional following, cut him from the creator, from God. Thus they may manipulate human at will.

We are Europeans now. But Europeans with the old, depraved attitude, mentality.
After 17 years of living in this country I am still surprised at the atheistically characterized people. I am shocked again and again what kind of people this broken ideology has created. There are sayings in the air like “do good and reap bad”. Those who work humanitarily and philantropically are suspected to hide behind a paravent, to cover up their real intentions. Beware of these, Nicolai and Elena declared, beware of strangers anyway. How many young people, even in Western Europe, do not see any sense in their lives and get lost in resignation and depression. This actually is atheism as well. Others permanently look for a thrill, are drowned by overindulgence and have lost any decency and sound relation to their fellow men. Atheism causes endless sorrow in the life of humans. They are not able to cope with this sorrow and develop an abyssal contempt for life.

Actually believers live more consciously, they are cheerful even if suffering from illness or pain, they take heart from inside fountains, see the sense of their lives and thus secureness in their belief. Those who think that there is no God, their life has no sense and no destination. Children, who have been brought to my house as babies, have grown up comfortably, generally at the beginning of their adolescence start to ask: why am I in a home, who is my mother, where is my father? It is the religiousness grounded in ourselves, which asks, why have I been born, what is my destination? A common sense does not narrow his life to physicalness, does not vegetate in a dull secularism, does not have any questions anymore.

Atheism is the death of the soul. In their eyes is bitterness, desperation about their empty, objectless lives. Those, however, who know the destination of their lives, who believe in God, they inspire, they encourage, they create a wonderful confidence and love to their neighbors.

If there is no God, evil will finally triumph, then Hitler, Stalin and Ceausescu would have been right. We, however, will have to justify our lives before God anyway. May there be ever so many exploiters in this country, suckers and prophets of corruption, may there be ever so many spoilers in this country (even ministers), who live at other people’s expenses and die of it, who profit from those in want in this Romania of 2008, who wallow in luxury, while others are dwindling into misery, who stuff their fat bellies, while others are starving, all this in this country. How should injustic cry for heaven in vain, no, no, God hears it and will condemn injustice. Jesus Christ is not the fool of history, but the saviour, the winner in eternity. Christus vincit. He says: You live, because I want you, because I approve you.

Without God there are no answers to our questions: where am I from, why am I here and where am I going to? Our hearts are cold and our souls are thirsting for God. Atheism, however, is an abyss and a crash into nothing. As the life of the non-believer is without an answer, his existence gets lost in this nothing. His life will never arrive anywhere, but in perdition.
God, however, is the love, which accompanies us and finally calls us to paradise, to light, to the eternal dimension of heaven. In this dimension we will see God: a light, brighter than any sun, and a purity, whiter and more shining than any snow.

And my children I tell: let them still stir up hatred against the priests, may they try to drive a wedge between us, listen to your souls, do not trust in these deniers of God and defiers of humans. Once I will wait for you in heaven in any case. And then you will be filled with wonder.

When time has come,
everything is going to be alright.
I will blaze the trail for the children.
I will dust the milky way with cocoa powder
and put the moon into candy wrapper.
I will turn the stars into sparklers burning eternally
and conjure the vitamines from the spinach
to the ice cream finally.
A fairy will dust Cincu with sweet confetti
and I will wait for my children in heaven.

In Europe we are all strangers

Working for peanuts

One year ago it still was a sleepy little village in Romania: Jucu. By then corn had been planted and the pigs had been fed. Then the big bulldozers and the construction machines came this spring. The hightech location Nokia village is built.

Jucu is in high spirits. The Finnish manufacturer of mobile phones builds an industrial park.

The manufacturer of mobile phones is going to invest 200 millions of Euros. A ridiculous amount compared to the 7.2 billions of Euros of profit in the past year. But the district of Cluj will have to pay as well: 30 millions of Euros for the appropriation of land and 95 millions of Euros for the expansion of the airport.

The substantial profit of the past year had been achieved by the 2.500 employees in Bochum, Germany. They are going to be jobless now. And they do not understand that this is Europe. One plant closes and goes, where working power costs a tenth, in the middle of Europe. The bosses of the industry are greedy, they dispose of annual salaries of millions of Euros. The profits are not high enough, for they want to have still higher salaries and investments. Thus they go, where wages are below poverty level anyway, e. g. in Romania.

8.500 people have applied for a job in Jucu. Until 2009 3.500 people will get a job at Nokia in Jucu, most of them at famine wages. But the jobless of Nokia in Bochum will starve as well, for the unemployment compensation in Germany is not sufficient anymore ? neither for living nor for dying. And the politicians? They are cynical. This action was the ?manifestation of equality of opportunities and competition in Europe?. That?s it: we all will be strangers in Europe, we will lose our identities. Envy is created. In Europe envy is creeping in. One of the workers in Bochum said: ?After the revolution in Romania whole Europe made tracks in order to help them. Of course we do not to begrudge the jobs to the Romanians. But why do we have to suffer from it ? because we have helped them??

But the Romanian state will profit as well. 100.000 Euros of income tax for Jucu per year. At least the streets there are to be coated with asphalt and a canalization is to be laid. And the Nokia factory will get own railroad and freeway connections. Good job, Mr. Mayor Pojar! ?Well?, he added, ?why do the Germans not come here for work, like three millions of Romanians are working abroad. Long live cynism!? The question, however, how many millions of Euros Nokia has got from the European funds for this industrial settlement, remains unanswered. They have raked in 40 millions in Bochum at that times and Europe has paid. Always for the big ones, never for the little ones!

It is not only Nokia, who pratices this ?subsidy nomadism?. The industry does not ask after the people. The industry just asks for the rate of return. And in
truth the politicians in Brussels support this attitude. Whom have we actually voted for? As said before: In Europe we are all strangers.

Ioan Pojar, the mayor of Jucu, now has three mobile phones. Of course they are all made by Nokia. In Germany the consumers now think about how they can boycott the trade mark Nokia in the future. I also join them and trash my ?Nokia?.

Once again, I am glad about the many new jobs in Jucu. But dear people there: do not get your hopes up too soon. After some years you will realize that in the course of booming industrialization living expenses will rocket upwards, too, and that your wages will not even cover the least expenses. Then of course you will demand higher wages. In vain. For then Nokia will have had arranged for another location and applied for subsidies. And when this inhuman game is over in Europe, there will be enough locations all over the world, even in Korea, even in China, where people are willing to work for peanuts.

(Would you, dear reader, please read this articel in 5 or 10 years once again.)


Yours,

Father Don Demidoff ICCC



Followup Jucu

The first dark clouds are already looming over the new working paradise in Jucu, even before the plant flourishes. The trade union Cartel Alfa has been brought to the scene, as they are afraid, that Nokia does not only pay famine wages, but is even going to demand a weekly working time of 60 to 70 hours from the workers. Cartel Alfa calls this slavery. Moreover, Nokia has demanded from the Romanian minister of employment Pacuraru a modification of the Romanian employment law, which currently allows 48 hours per week at the most, i. e. already 8 to 10 hours above the German standards. This is another reason to not buy ?Nokias?, as these mobile phones are made with the sweat of slaves.

It did not matter to anybody that in Germany thousands become jobless, because Nokia is going to close the local plant. Of course they expect technology and prosperity for Romania. But at what price?

But on the seventh day you shall rest. But the seventh day shall be your holy day.

Commandment of God. Text clear, you do not need any theologists or sophisticated readings.

But people treat this commandment with contempt. We have never provoked God in a way like we do in our times. There are the new gods Metro, Selgros, Baumax, real, Penny, Billa, Kaufland and all the others. The new gods with their cathedrals of consumption. The working days with opening hours until night are not sufficient any more. The Sundays have to serve as well, against the commandment of God. Consumption nonstop. Alienation and desecrating in a clean sweep. It is not only the customers, whole families, who are allured to these temples with new attractions again and again, but it is the humiliation of the employees, who are forced to work for starvation wages on a Sunday, to spurn the commandment of God. And the lures of consumption do not only disturb the relationship to God, but also the peace in the families. The greediness for goods brings conflicts in many a family. And the cashiers, who have to let the goods pass by on the conveyor belt on the holy Sunday, who have with every new customer and with every article and its price to realize that they are not able to afford this or that for a long time yet, taking into account the prices of Western Europe contrary to their starvation wages and that they pay the price for provoking God, for spurning the commandment of God.

By the way, as a German, who has been living in this country for 17 years, I ask myself, by what right in 2007 many articles and comsumer goods proportional to this starvation wages are more expensive than in many other European countries, where the paid wages and salaries at least enable the people to survive. Who actually is shamelessly getting on the gravy train here? The Romanian state? The import duties? Or even the new gods, the entrepeneurs with their luxury temples, which even in Germany you have to search for in these dimensions.

And where are the voices of the shepherds of the churches? Why keep the bishops and metropolitans silent in view of this desecration of God? Why do they not say a word to this degradation of the Sunday? Even the German entrepreneurs seem to believe that Romania is the country of endless opportunities. In Germany and other countries they have to stick to the shop closing laws. Consumption without an end? Consumption nonstop? Consumption without God or as a new god?

In Germany the two big churches, the Catholics and Protestants, now have raised their voices. After in Berlin the shops had suddenly been allowed to open on the four Advent Sundays, the churches have joined forces and filed a complaint of unconstitutionality against the violation of laws.

Congratulations, gentlemen! Church attendance in Germany has already decreased to a minimum. By now the Germans do no longer apprehend the laws of God either, they are addicted to consumption binge. Of course, the bishops say, do not more people go to church, because the shops are kept close. But God wanted it to be like this. The day of peace, the day of reflection, the day of the family and of the care for other people.

I wonder when in this still Christian country Romania the dam will break. When the people instead of going to church and to glorify God alone will meet in the temples of selfishness and consumption binge. How many people are beggared already now, driven by greed and thinking of possessing. How many carelessly take out a loan, in order to quickly fulfill their dreams. How many are no longer able already now to pay their instalments on time or do work for these instalments only, causing harm and disturbances in the family. How wise was it made up by God to command the respect for the seventh day.

But manhood more and more builds fantasy worlds. The fancy flyers who all will fall so far, destroyed and repudiated by God.

Are the signs of the world not clear and precise:

The years of ember, the years of flood? The years of blood? Yes, continue to hurt the honor of our God, continue to provoke him and you will get your comeuppance. In the USA the woods are burning down in big parts of the country and the people flee from the fire. During the recent years floods on several continents have been the death of millions of people or at least have ruined their existence. And in the never ending wars of this world the blood of humans is shed without an end, blood of opponents and enemies. And the climatic disaster will finish manhood off.

And the churches keep silent?! But God does not keep silent. He gives us so many hints that we are going to rush ourselves into destruction. What actually will the people leave for the coming generations, for their own children and grandchildren? An ecologically destroyed environment? And an economic system, which only is about the profit of few and the control of few over many yet.

What does this have to do with the commandment of sanctification of the Sunday? For us humans God wanted to create a day of reflection, a day of inwardness, a day of prayer and of meeting HIM, the Almighty. In many articles in this paper I have reminded you again and again: only in silence it is possible to find God. His voice is low, thus in our noise and bustle and consumption binge it is impossible to meet God.

Again and again I have been moved by the fact that in Romania the orthodox Christians practice a concrete daily piety and devotion to God. Even if not everybody goes to church, some may only pretend to be believing, many make the sign of the cross, when passing a church or a priest. They show their devotion for the icons and devoutly kiss them. Even Romanians who seldom go to church only, stick to the commandments of fasting, knowing that this is salutary for them as well.

But this will not last for a long time either. Consumption, the new gods will make for it that we do not become aware of the most important incident in this world, the irresistible decline of the human soul. We are sufficiently busy with material matters and are going to lose our soul. The Sunday does already have no soul anymore.

Now in the time of Advent we are waiting again for the Saviour. Let us remain faithful to him. Let us give back the soul to the Sunday, and then but only then everything is going to be alright. For the Sunday is the day of the Lord forever and to all eternity.

Yours,

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

Sunday Word from the Book Priest of Thorns by Don Demidoff

Romania, what a country!

All humans have a backbone, but only few show some. On the annual meeting of the state combine the direction presents their balance sheet. As always, the quota are more than fulfilled.

Is there anybody, who wants to ask something? the chairman wants to know in the end.

Actually, there is somebody, who wants to ask a question:

Please, Mr. Chairman, my name is Popescu. I am working in the accountants department of the combine. My impression is, Mr. Chairman, that there is a mistake in the balance you presented to us. I believe, your data are not correct.

Well, the chairman answers, we are going to analyze that and at the next annual meeting we will explain it to you.

One year later at the next meeting of the combine the chairman once again presents the balance.

Are there any questions? he wants to know.

Actually, again there is sombdody who has a question:

Please, Mr. Chairman, my name is Constantinescu. Where is Mr. Popescu?

The former vice president of Ceausescu is the president of today, Ion Iliescu. Thus nobody must be surprised that nothing has changed in Romania and that people are still in fear. They are afraid of me, because I am not in fear.

The communist system has deprived the people of their courage. It will take a long time until the Romanians will get back their backbones. Even our children, who of course grow up much more free than many of their contemporaries in Romania, indirectly feel the effects of this system. The fact is that their educators have grown up under this dictatorship. Therefore I tell my children, that the people in the Western countries respect each other, that there are certain behaviours, that e. g. it is not usual to eat in a way as every minister still does, that one offers the seat in the bus to elderly people, that in the doorway one waits until somebody has left before entering oneself.

The reader of course immediately notices that I have not been living in Germany for some years. Nevertheless I hold these values in high esteem for my children. And I think it has worked amazingly well. You must not forget from which surroundings the children come and in which surroundings they grow up, e. g. at school. Therefore we have to show assertiveness, staying power and sometimes even strictness.

The people in this country will not be free for a long time yet. They do not understand, that they have the right to fight for their rights. The still assume that they do not have any chance to proceed against the corrupt mayor or policeman. I am also suspect to many Romanians, because I carry on lawsuits. It is not that I like to, but because I have to protect the foundation and therewith my children from offenses. I have even been accused of being an processomaniac.

For fourty years the people have swallowed many things and endured injustice. At the end they have endured everything right up to the deepest humiliation. The people have been completely broken. A stranger 

hardly able to imagine. Even fifteen years after the revolution I am not able to find somebody I could have a discussion with. They just do not have an own opinion.

But how far developped is the Western world? The decadent West just still cares for its own wellness. An enourmous selfishness has been instilled into us, mainly by the industry and the capitalism. The extended family had to be divided, because that made it possible to sell five fridges instead of only one. Thus it is more easy to sell five cars instead of one as well.

Of course this is an oversimplified and undifferentiated point of view. But the consequence is clear: The extended family has served its times. Now instead everybody wants to leave the family home as early as possible and to become independent more and more early. You shall honour your mother and your father, but the love for the parents has suddenly become a minor matter. And what happens at school nowadays? Now it is said, that we have to publish an etiquette guide for teenagers again, we have to talk about values again. Why have the values been neglected then first?

It began with the antiauthoritarian education, then the partnership between pupils and teachers was introduced. Today the teachers do not know how to cope with the rebellious pupils. They walk all over them or shoot whole teaching staffs. And after every catastrophe it is discovered that the offender had nobody to talk with. The idea of an humanistic school, where the pupils respect their teachers and the teachers educate the pupils in a human sense, has almost perished.

One of the basic values of the human civilization is the belief in God. Meaning that religion provides the base frame for the social values. If today it is stated that people have lost their belief, it must be allowed to ask: Why do the people not believe in God anymore today?

The answer has to be: because the people have been disappointed by the churches on a grand scale. But instead of taking these disappointments seriously, the church has chased away these people. The Protestant and Catholic churches match each other in this matter. Beside that a quite new gospel has developped, the capital. It suggests to the people that their personal well being is the basis for their new life sentiment. Consequently people learn to be selfish. At global level the big industries have succeeded in indoctrinating people in such a way that everybody believes to have to own everything that is offered.

Representative for that is the fast development of computer techniques. Hardware or software, bought today, is already out of date tomorrow. But also many other goods, which have been used in a more modest way before, are bought several times today. Hardly a household which has not two TV’s or two cars. The industry only can sell five cars to a family, if it contributes to separating families to different places. Living circumstances have to become more and more agreeable. The freezers flow over with convenience food which has to be shortly heated only. Thereby people become more and more easygoing and more and more turn towards a superficial kind of life. The media have adjusted to that and assist and support the people in doing nothing. How else can it be explained that thousands of people are watching TV and mischieviously follow with great interest how others make a fool of themselves. The material animalism tempts the people to only think of nothing but themselves. Young people are not drawn from the woodwork by values or humanitarian mindset anymore. The service to the human has to step far back behind the own amusement.

Globalization will continue to benefit selfishness and the mixing of cultural values.

The idea of multi-culture has accelerated the decline in values. All cultures and their corresponding moral concepts are easily mixed up with each other. The liberties other cultures take in Germany would be unthinkable the other way round. What would happen, if we would like to build a Catholic church in Iran? We are so tolerant that we are eaten up by our own tolerance. The globalization will continue to benefit selfishness and the mixing of cultural values and deprive the people of their identity. In globalization I again realize the three essential ideas of freemasonship:

The standard world, the standard religion with its great world master builder (maybe we are told some time, who that is) and the standard human, genetically planned and manipulated, optimized regarding health aspects, programmed for a specific function and a corresponding consumption.

The existence is calculated, everything will be unemotional accountancy only. Unforeseen events are minimized. No! I am in favor of leaving the human the way God has planned him. The completion is reserved for another dimension, and I do not believe those who promise the completion of the human here on earth. The child, who comes into the world handicapped, and the old one, who has to suffer bitter agony in his last days, have their right to exist and a sense as well.

It is not a coincidence, that we deal with globalization today. The industry, the big promoter of globalization, does not have any other ambitions than to continue to condense, in order to earn even more money. The places of production are opened there, where manpower is the most cheapest. They are transferred from the countries, where they had been projected and built up. Small, local shops do hardly have a chance of survival. Only a lunatic has a corner shop today. Even bars belong to any chains operating world wide. Only in some dubious antisocial quarters are still individual bars, because there a former boxer stands behind the counter and tells dirty jokes.

What kind of nonsense is it that on one hand millions of people are without a job and on the other hand it is thought about delaying pensionable age to 67? Big concerns merge to still bigger world concerns, just for the purpose of eliminating competition. Subsequently factories and banks are closed and hundreds of thousands lose their jobs. How can you call that progressive or good? What makes up the value of an individual? The value of being needed! Being needed makes you satisfied.

I can give you many examples for this issue from Romania. In the beginning there only were small cigarettes here, which preferably had been made of old mattresses. After opening of the borders Romania had been flooded with Western cigarettes, cheaper than the domestic weed. Today the tobacco market is controlled by Western companies, the Romanian brands do not play a role any more. It is self-evident that the prices of the West cigarettes will be increased step by step.

It is my strong conviction that by integrating Romania into the EU the Europeans pursue 

only one purpose: They want to get at the natural resources of this country. I level severe criticism at the Romanians, but just as severe is my criticism at the Europeans. It is not nobleness, it is not charity, which leads the Europeans saying that this country must be supported. In Portugal there still is child’s work today, and how long has Portugal already been a member of the EU?

Romania is full of natural resources, of oil, of gold, of metals. The soil, especially in Transylvania, is rich, black and fertile. Besides, here is cheap manpower, which can still be exploited for a long time. Yet come up the first factories, which produce goods, which nobody in this country can afford to buy. Now my critics may point out to me that the people in Poland have profited from the European Community as well. That is right. But as well right is that except from Albany in Romania the worst form of Communism in the Warsaw Pact had ruled with a kind of isolation, which never has existed in Poland in such way. The indoctrination of the people in Romania has been perfected for fourty years. It will not take years, but decades to soften it.

If you come to Romania, you will notice that the people of this country are not able to look into your eyes. You will see, that Romanians do not have an own opinion. They are in fear. It will take still a long time until they are free. For a real revolution like the one in Poland never has taken place in Romania. The secret service, the Securitate, has never been liquidated, but was just reorganized. Bribe money belongs to the daily dealings. Romania is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

The indoctrination will rule the people for many years yet. Former communist countries like Poland, Hungary and Czechia have realized one thing: The indoctrination has to be eradicated. An important means on this way is the radical privatization, in order to free the essential areas of daily life from the nationalized, traditional communist grasp. During the past fifteen years the Romanians have not even succeeded in taking essential or serious steps to this direction. The big factories are still controlled by the state. But a state only rarely is able to operate economically. Why should in this regard Romania be different from Germany?

Command of bakshish

Serban Mihailescu, former secretary general of prime minister Adrian Nastase, in common parlance is called Micky Bakshish. His bribery scandals prove how corruption works at best in Romania. Because I complained to the state secretary Gabriela Coman about her practices of re-integrating the home children to their families due to statistical reasons and therewith to leave these children to an undescribable misery once again, because I finally brought a charge against her due to abuse of office, Mr. Bakshish sent his controllers under the direction of Virgil Teodorescu, arrested in the meantime, to me as well. He came in order to get me to pay. They even got as far as my bedroom and nosed around everywhere. Who, like me, refuses to pay or better say to bribe, is harrassed with false accusations and investigations.

According to the latest ranking from the negative side on the worldwide corruption scale of Transparency International Romania lies level with the African State Malawi. Even at the supreme court of cassation payments of bribe are possible. The judge Aurelia Bunea required 41.000 US-Dollars from a convict and remitted a five-years-prison-penalty of a defendant. In 2004 4.594 Romanians fight for their rights at the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg, which they are not awarded in their own country.

The chancellor of Germany, Schröder, who visited Romania in August 2004, indeed uttered his concern about the continuing corruption, but declared, that it is a done deal that Romania will be integrated into the European Union in 2007. Good night, poor Schröder-Germany, if the local practices silently and creepingly will become the order of the day also there. For corruption will eat up the honest. They will not be able to even touch corruption.

From the cradle to the grave the human here only can survive, if he surrenders to the system of corruption. I am coming from home, is the key sentence, and then you give a small or big present to the civil servant. Starting with a pack of coffee (it has to be Jacobs) right through to a house or a car. There are various key words for his willingness to bribe: Spaga, Mita or Ciubuc.

The nurse, who allows visitors to the newborns only against money, the churchyard caretaker, who is going to find a free burial place, the doctor, who has to execute an easy or serious operation, the pupils, who want to have good grades and the students, who want to pass their exams, the entrepreneur, who urgently needs a telephone and the archivist, who shall come out with a file, the customs officer, who shall withdraw his crazy claim, that the laws of immigration or departure had changed yesterday: it always has to be bribed. The one who does not bribe, has to go begging or die earlier. A Romanian household spends about 10 per cent for Spaga (bribe). Indeed there is an anti-corruption office since shortly, but everyone is well-advised to not use it.

The troughs, from which the ruling class eats, are still the same. Only the pigs have changed.

The foreign investors care for a dynamic economic growth, and yet Romania remains to be a poor country. Half of the population still lives below the poverty line and with its minimum wage of 69 Lei Romania ranks at the second to last position among the EU candidate states.

What kind of democracy is that over here? Ceausescu, his wife and some leading cadre people had been executed in 1989 without hesitation. The troughs, from which the ruling class eats, are still the same. Only the pigs have changed. The mayor of Cincu changes the party after every election as he does with his pants. For he only gets at the troughs, if he has the right color.

From the first day I refused to even give a pack of coffee for bribe. But who behaves like that, has to go begging, he is not allowed to join the game. At my arrival in Romania in 1991 I had not yet unpacked my bags a tax inspector bluntly demanded a German car from me. If I did not meet his desire, the tax authorities would never leave me alone. I refused  - and he was proved right. When I complained to his superior, he was promoted to a chief inspector.

These examples alone would fill a whole book. This system will not give any chance to the abandoned children, the children of the streets, for they do not have a lobby at all. Truth has to go begging

The car of the minister,
 

Friday, July 9, 2004. Two bailiffs, Gabriel-George Draganescu and his colleague Crafcenco, my lawyer Aneta Vovca and her assistant Traian Marinescu, my invisible special heavenly escort angel Manuel and me gather in front of the ministry of health. The angel Manuel is the angel for hopeless cases. We are beginning an action, which has never taken place in Romania, not in the new times after the revolution, even not at all during the rule of the dictator.

In February the Supreme Court in Bucharest had decided, that the arbitrariness of the director general in the ministry of health, Domnul Buraga, to deny the prolongation of my residence permit is injustice. For thirteen years I had to go from one judicial authority to the next in order to beg for my residence permit. If the mayors of Cincu and Iacobeni, the gentlemen Tanase and Cori, had issued a so-called advice letter, and the secretary general of the district council, Andre Polefka, a letter of recommendation, the director general of the ministry of health could have issued a further so-called Recomandare.

Would have, if he had wanted to.

All these papers would have to be presented to the district police, which had to issue the prolongation of the permit.

Would have, if they had wanted to.

For thirteen years twice a year a procedure of harrassment and offenses. As meanwhile I am known in the whole country for not paying bakshish, it is of course my fault.

At the beginning of 2004 time had come at last. I once again traveled to Bucharest due to my permit. The secretary of the director general, Anna-Maria, who sufficiently knew me and the foundation, handed a form over to me and denied me the letter of recommendation. This form had nothing to do with my application at all. I demanded to talk to the director general personally. The director general was not in, she answered. Once again I was overwhelmed by my choleric temper and shouted at her to tell me where I could find the director general.

I was beside myself: After 13 years of harrassment this was just again one of many at all kinds of authorities there was no stopping me. I shouted so loudly that suddenly the door of the almighty director general opened. Actually it was him personally. He asked who shouted so loudly? Before I could explain something to him, he pulled me in his pompous office and told me that there was a new law. Of course that was obviously a lie. It was the umpteenth attempt to finally remove me from Romania. He laughed when I furiously left his room threatening legal action against him.

He knew very well that in Romania it was almost impossible to take authorities to court, even if the law had definitely been violated by them. Did my threat make any sense at all after the files of more than twenty complaints, which I had made, had simply disappeared. And was it possible at all to bring this high public servant of the ministry of health before the court?

My lawyer found the way. On February 3, 2004, the Inalta Curte de Casatie si Justitie in Bucharest in the last instance adjudged the ministry of health to issue the necessary letter of recommendation and I could not believe my ears decreed to pay a compensation of 500 Million Lei (about 12.000 Euros).

For the Romanian justice this was an enormous judgement, an unbelievable sum. My personal escort angel Manuel from the forth dimension must have had his fingers (sorry: wings) in the pie. Actually the months without residence permit had been depressing, insulting, painful. After the many years of humanitarian dedication, after more than a decade of sacrifices for my children, without a permit I had to leave the country like a tourist every four weeks, because otherwise I would have been illegally in the country and every common policeman could have deported or arrested me.

In February the irrevocable decision had been enacted, but the ministry constantly refused to pay. The bailiff tried the various banks of the ministry. They declared that everything was budgeted, and that there was not budget for such a judgment. It is really difficult to get a bailiff off the ground in Romania and thus he implied to Aneta, that there was hardly a chance to get the money. Various friendly attempts to make the ministry pay failed. They sardonically laughed about my demand.

The special angel Manuel from the sixth heavenly choire is the holy-helpers angel in fight, the angel of readiness in dead-end situations. During the Romanian years he had become my true companion. Now, on Friday, July 9, 2004, 11.00 a. m., Manuel is waiting for us, invisibly, in front of the door of the ministry of health. And indeed: the two bailiffs appear. Maybe it was Manuel who had made that the staff car of the minister is parked just in front of the entrance, for he usually has a special parking space behind the building. Thus the bailiffs directly proceed to the action, note down the data and the license plate of the car and impound it.

I am at a loss for words and I would have only been too pleased to touch my angel, to pinch him. We reach the third floor without any obstacles, the office of the minister. Once again it is stated that he is not in. The bailiffs, however, and my lawyers do not get led astray at all. They go to the office of the solicitors. Five ladies in a small office.

The summer heat is unbearable. Thus the ladies are hanging around, one of them is polishing her nails, another one is reading a book, the third one is eating an apple. It is hard to understand for them what is going to happen then. One of the bailiffs asks for a chair, in order to take a seat at the desk, jams between the important ladies, gets his notes out of his bag, manually writes a two page protocol (Proces verbal) and declares that the staff car of the minister - number of the license plate B-02 WMS is herewith impounded. The ministry does not have the right to sell the car and if the compensation is not paid to me within the next 14 days, the car would be sold by public sale.

To the ladies who are no longer bored at all, dropping book, apple and nail-polish brush, this must seem like a bad dream. In this really funny situation I am not able to deny myself one of my comments and Aneta violently drives me, drawing at my jacket, out of the office, as she is afraid of one of my choleric eruptions.

This as well must be a deed of the holy-helpers angel, for just entering the hall I discover minister Brinzan with a bodyguard, who disappear in his office. I feel that Manuel gives me a push in order to follow the minister. And thus I politely, but loudly enough, knock at the iron door. As nobody calls me in, I enter. There I find a meeting of important ladies and gentlemen, solicitors, consultants, a state secretary and an impressive secretary. She shouts at me that I am not allowed to just enter the outer office of the Mr. Minister.

I tell her that I take it for really important to personally talk to the minister and hand over to her the April edition of the paper acasa, in which spread over two pages it is reported about the judgement under the title: The priest and the justice against the Romanian state (Preotul si Justitia versus statul Roman)«. Of course nobody there had read this article. They had not read that also the journalists had tried to reach the minister for several times, they had not read that it was an indignation that public servants do not perform their task and that now the tax payer has to pay the compensation.

The people in the room look at me as if I was from another star. Or are they really able to recognize my heavenly envoy? I am banished with wild gesticulations, the minister is busy. I call the secretary a tovarasa (communist companion), shout something of communist ideology and predict that now times will change at last: Not the applicant gives the bakshish, but the applicant gets compensation.

From the ground of my heart I thank the bailiffs, my lawyers, especially I thank Manuel, my holy-helpers angel of the fourth dimension.

Still today for most of the Romanians it is unimaginable to fight for their right in court.

Again and again people, who look for shelter, protection, advice and help at my house, tell me: Father, what shall we do, we are too unimportant. Still today for most of the Romanians it is unimaginable to fight for their right in court. They still are in fear, are humiliated and by no means want to provoke one of top brass. They are so frightened, that it was possible to just take their houses and their belongings from them (nationalize), to take their freedom, to deny their right, to tear apart families and to steal their children from the fields, in order to transform them to violent candidates in inhuman detaining institutions, to make them to members of the Securitate, to the guys with the blue eyes, how they are still called in common parlance. They are still so scared that they just look into another direction, just look away, when they shake hands with strangers.

Yours

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

ISBN 973-0-33816-3

We cannot form the children in our sense. We have to accept and love them just as God gave them to us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Become like the children

The children have a great worry, that is that something could happen to me. Even they notice my decay increasing from year to year. The first they ask in their prayers is health for me. ?Give him power for his work?, they say. That often is embarrassing for me and I think, I should stop them. Maybe they should rather pray for others than for me. It might be assumed that the prayers have been ordered for me. But these prayers are from the children themselves. And of course they are really useful, as my work, my thorny way, costs me a lot of power. And my own prayers often are choked by an unmerciful fatigue. Coming back from anywhere with the car the first question of the children always is: "Father, how are you?"

If there was no heaven, the children would create it with their prayers.

The children of Cincu pray with a deep fervor. I always say: If there was no heaven, if there was no God, then these children would create heaven with their prayers. There is a story as well concerning this. One day Don Bosco broke down among his street boys. He had contracted a serious pneumonia. It was very difficult to treat pneumonia then and it mostly ended fatal. His children prayed night and day from deep conviction and with a deep fervor in the patio in front of Don Bosco?s window. Some days later the door of the balcony opened and Don Bosco came out, a little unsteady indeed, but cured from his illness.

"Viva Don Bosco, viva Don Bosco", shouted and yelled these simple children, whose prayers had been answered. They had prayed him back to life.

"I got well again, because you have prayed so much!" Don Bosco thanked them. ?I tell you something, my boys: You, who have been abandoned and tortured, you have a contract with heaven. Make use of it in the future.?

I also tell that my children, for they have helped me more than once to overcome staggering situations. Especially after my accident and before the following operation, which took eight hours, I strongly felt the power of the prayers. I did not know, if I had to probably wake up without my leg. Indeed I would have been able to cope with that, for I have a strong mind. But the sympathy, which I got from all directions and nooks of Europe, and again and again the message: ?We pray for you?, did very much support me. I had the feeling that there had been created a unique ?chain of prayers? all over Europe. An unconscious, not organized chain of prayers, which gave me the security of being in good hands. I was enfolded by the feeling of an unbelievable confidence and security, which removed each and any doubts.

I really feel pushes of power, when my children pray for me. Nobody tells them to get up at night and to pray for me in the chapel. Nobody tells them to keep a prayer watch in front of my door, taking turns every hour by themselves. That happened when I had exceptionally bad times, as during my coma and after the horrible car crash. The absolute miracle for me is, when after several days in bed I get up, as if nothing had happened. And when I get letters, which are telling of great worries and big problems, I write back: Don?t worry. I tell it my children. They have a contract with heaven.

The children have a contract with heaven.

These children are wonderful. When I was in a coma, my children prayed me out of it. For it was not foreseeable, if I woke up again in sound condition. They watched in Iacobeni and in Cincu. And Viorel, who is boisterous and always acts as if nothing human could touch him, in such moments shows unexpected characteristics. I was angry with him, because he had not got in touch with me after I had woke up from the coma.

"He has not even called me on the phone", I complained about him to Minodora, our accountant.

"Father", she answered and gave me a deprecating stare, ?you now wrong Viorel. You may not say something like that about Viorel.? There has to happen a lot before a Romanian gives an answer like that.

"How do you mean that, Minodora?" I wanted to know.

?When you were ill, he sat here with me and held my hand, in order to prevent me from crying myself, and he cried so much.?

Well, thorns are dealed out as well.

How often am I mistaken in the people! I cordially apologized to Viorel. I am only human after all, a lonesome human among this many children, and sometimes attach too much importance to many an incident.

Often my children shame me, especially, when they are moved by deep religiousness. That comes to me quite clearly, when they word their personal prayers at the altar. I did not teach them. The children got into the habit to send their personal prayers to heaven after the Angelus ? that is the prayer, which we pray three times a day (?I am the maid of the Lord. It shall happen to me according to your word.?) I am very happy when I listen to the thoughts the children word and when I hear how they react to current events in the world and that they pray for me and my health as well. And they shame me, because I am often not able or too tired to pray. It happens that I am not able to celebrate mass on Sunday. Then I sit down in the rear bench. The children perform their service as if I stood at the altar. How can I describe these moments of blessedness.

?You shall become like the children?, Jesus said. Much earlier than most of the adults the children realize when I am not doing well. Become like the children again, open-minded, modest, natural and accessible. My children understand, when I suffer, when the crown of thorns, which had been put on me at my ordination, hurts me once again.

After all it is not a long time ago. After the crash respectively the attack on my life in 1995 I have pulled myself together again. When I had to go to the hospital for a check-up soon after the accident, it was found that my bones had consolidated so quickly that the doctor called it a miracle. I am sure that the prayers of my children have worked that.

Of course I did something, too. I fought against my immobility until I was able to walk again. First of all I threw my wheelchair down the stairs, then I threw away my crutches and at last the walking stick. At that time I fought. But the diabetes, which I suffer from today, causes my slow but steady decay. Every sickness, which I was easily able to get over in former times, more and more weakens me.

What  had not been quite clear to me in Amsterdam, in Romania I got it: I understand these children. Now I understand them. Now I have realized what I felt, when being a child my talents had not been recognized, my fantasies had been suppressed, because I should be forced into a pattern, where I did not belong. If not a priest, I would have loved to become an actor. For I had a Russian soul but had to grow up in the German philistinism, where I got a slap in the face from my father, when I closed the door of the car too loudly ? the expensive car could have bursted. Yes, I understand these children. As it is my own stigma as well. That does not mean that I am too soft with them. But I know, which tricks and which educative steps I have to apply in order to reach their hearts. Children have the right to exceed the lines, the duty of the educator is to draw the lines and make them clear. It is not a coincidence that the increasing criminal energy of children is caused by an education devoid of religion. Sometimes it is necessary to apply severity, in order to help them, as for some children there is no development and I risk to lose them to the street again. But mostly I reach them with a grimace, a game or a foolish disguise more than with thousands of sermons or useful punishments. If you make children laugh, you have won their hearts.

But within our human limits we are not able to control everything. That is not possible. I have done what I was able to do. Everything else I leave to the hands of God. If God is the God we believe in, if he is the benevolent, gracious, loving God, the God, who especially is the God of the children, then he never will leave these children alone again.

Child poverty in Europe

The German poet and columnist already in the 18th century said the famous sentence: Thinking about Germany at night keeps me from sleeping. In 1831 at the age of 34 he emigrated to France.

If Heine lived today, he probably would not only be kept from sleeping by thinking about Germany at night, but by thinking about the whole of Europe at night. The glorious Europe, the globalized Europe keeps us from sleeping. For a long time Europe will not be as promising as those, who are profiting from it ? a small, but powerful minority ? try to make us believe. And Romania is overrun with the European notables from politics, in common parlance a thing like that is just called cheap propaganda. Is the mayor of Sibiu, Klaus Johannis, not yet sick of permanently acting as a tourist guide for the travelers and of leading them through the city over and over again?

If you carefully examine all the promises, in many cases only the shade of hope remains. For example the children of Europe.

Coming from Germany I have been caring for the depraved and impoverished children and teenagers in this country for 17 years now. How have we been kept from sleeping due to the abandoned children after the "revolution" actually until today. Yes, it is true, the misery of these children and teenagers in Romania was and is a horror. Of course, much has happened, much has still to happen. Much will not happen, even because of the fact, that the Romanians have with great enthusiasm adopted what does not do good either to the people over there or to those over here: bureaucracy. A dictatorship of bureacracy has spread all over Europe, a dictatorship that does not help the people, even not the children, in a truly free and liberal democracy. And moreover: the bug of the European flood of regulations, a bug that more and more controls the privacy of the individual human and implements regulations, where nothing is to be regulated at all.

That must taste like honey cake to the Romanians, the old warhorses, the communist comrades and Stalinists. Ceausescu and his obsessions seemed to be a comedy against the dictatorship now coming over from Europe. Now we are regulated to death and our children cut their teeth on that quite naturally. After the collective has finally been unmasked as an ideology, uniforms are going to be introduced at school. Long live uniformity, egalitarianism, the collective. But God wanted individuals, the individual human and not the collective and for sure no uniform? But first of all God wanted children, whom he loves very much and whom he wants to have with him: let the children come to me.

But how looks it like in the world of the children? In Europe? All over the world? All over the world it is viciously gossiped about the Romanian children. It always is useful to draw off the attention of one?s own problems by pointing a finger at the abandoned children in Romania. Even if we now have a new generation of abandoned children in Romania. The left children of millions of emigrants and job-seekers, who ravage Italy and other countries and leave their children to Grandma or the neighbor.

But there are not only Romanian children who are poor and forgotten. The truth is that especially in the rich nations the poverty of children is increasing. And the coldness towards this poverty through no fault of one?s own, the indifference.

Since 1990 in Germany child poverty has more increased than in other industrial countries. Every tenth child in Germany lives in relative poverty. In France a million children live below the poverty line. Even in England the rich become more and more rich at the expense of the children and the poor more and more poor, namely the children. In Europe every fifth teenager lives in poverty.

18 millions of Europeans, teenagers, in Europe are poor, are ?exposed to poverty?, as it is called by bureaucracy. But where is the flood of regulations now, that could allow for a modest everyday living of these children and teenagers. The reality of these poor children is that they are more often sick, that they have difficulties at school, that they very quickly become addicted to alcohol and drugs, turn violent and end up in the criminal scene.

Thinking about Europe at night?The EU-bureaucrats indeed speak of ?great social challenges?. But when do these challenges finally arrive at Brussels? My proposal is to apply the flood of regulations just here: Ladies and gentlemen in Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London. Regulate some redistribution. No, no, not in the communist way, that would only mean that the poor still do not get anything, because the nomenclature takes care of itself only, as it still is in Bucharest today. No, you should regulate with imagination and charity. Please read the gospel. You could for example do without the permanent increase of parliamentary allowances all over Europe and thus at least set an example. I should not be surprised if soon there were imitators in the meaning of the gospel.

Thinking about Europe at night, Heine would say today, I am kept from sleeping. But the good Heine would have to emigrate a lot farther, France would not work any more, because there he would quite sure not get a wink of sleep. The immigrated teenagers and children there showed us how to set cars on fire and to sack shops. In order that Mr. Heine and you and me are kept from sleeping? As if - they are just hungry and there is only one certainty in their future: absolute poverty.

Well, where to emigrate? To the United States? Oh, my God. We do not want to have a closer look, how children and teenagers go bad in the ghettos and slums. Where to in this global world? To the moon? To the Mars via the Milky Way?

You know what, I stay here and I sleep well anyway. Do you know why? Because I have a good conscience, because due to my solidarity with the poor and the children and teenagers I will get a proper ticking-off by the rich, the bureaucrats and the overeager regulators and because it is even not possible to get away from them by seeking refuge on the moon.

See you next Friday. Everything is going to be alright? We shall see. Let us get some sleep first of all.

Yours,

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

Mother Teresa, missionary of charity: When I talk to the people, they get light and courage. But I do not get anything of these, everything is dark inside of me.?

Mother Teresa: she had been beatified tremendously fast, what takes decades, more often centuries and more for other members of the Catholic church. Nevertheless Mother Teresa kept a shattering secret:

She felt rejected by God, empty, and her doubts in belief grew more and more. This autumn a book about her has been published, a shattering book.


First of all it were personal letters, which she had interdicted to be published. The order she had founded, the ?Missionaries of Charity?, did not respect that. After her beatification the bombshell of the great Mother Teresa was dropped, who had been called a saint by the people already during lifetime, the icon of charity, the saint of the Indian Slums. For me she was an ubermensch as well, saintly, sacrosanct, out of reach. I would have loved to have just a small fraction of her longanimity, her unselfishness, her love for the oppressed and the languishing. When I looked at her, I doubted my own performance and my capacity for the dedication to the last of the last. And now much to our surprise we can read, that she felt ?totally cut off from God?

Oh my God, how often during the years of my priesthood have I been in search of this ?dimension God?, how often have I thought that my prayers and tears remained unheared and unseen by the ONE, whom I had given back my whole life. I left my home, my friends, my wealth and my comfort in order to come to this Romania of the after-revolution: ?Take your sandals and do not look back?, I heard Him say. And until today again and again I ask myself: Lord, where are you, Lord, please help me, let me understand, for after 17 years in this country I understand less and less, I am hurt by the mentality of the people over here, it even becomes more and more difficult for me to speak the language, which seems more and more strange to me. Lord, where are you?

Mother Teresa confessed: I do not have any belief, Lord, where are you? Is that the love of God, she continues asking, the reality of darkness and cold. These could have been my own words, when she says: my happiness is just a cover, under which I hide emptiness and misery. Is it possible, God, that in this Romania I am persecuted, libeled, outlawed and harrassed as well for all the sacrifices I offer in your name? Where are you, God? During the International Ecumenic Assembly in Sibiu, when I had been excluded especially by the priests and bishops, the false brothers, and when I and my children spreading a newspaper had been persecuted by the police, I sometimes cried to heaven. But my cry was lethargic, soundless, nobody could hear my cry.

In our succession we usually do not get a sign of love, neither from God, nor from the people. If we got praise and honor, it would be suspect. But should we not remember that even the son of God suffered from this phenomenon. Do we not remember Golgatha, where Jesus despairingly cried: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!

That is my personal hold in the depths of the dispiteous loneliness, in a foreign country, in a cold and sad mentality, which can even be read from the faces of many Romanians, the depression of people after 18 years of the supposed revolution, in rites and customs and superstition partially coming from hundreds of years ago, in an orthodox state church, which has misused people and rather wants to be a money collecting organization and still does not give the boot to the Securitate confessors. Of course, the Catholic church has its darkest eras and the Protestant church of Romania has cheered the great conducator and sent its declaration of loyalty, while other humans had been tortured and murdered in the dungeons and jails. Do these churches have the right to segregate people and to place themselves above them? There is still torture in Romanian prisons and the churches and the mighty gentlemen in Europe and Bucharest close their eyes in self-righteousness. That is my personal hold in these pains in this country: the despairing cry of Jesus: my God, my God.

Mother Teresa felt such a strong separation from God that this pain ate her up. She confessed: I am not able to pray anymore. I know this kind of pain as well. Sometimes I am not able to celebrate the Holy Mass. My legs fail while I am standing at the altar and looking up to Golgatha. I am totatally empty then, everything is so far away and God does not answer, just like Mother Teresa. I feel like being in a dark tunnel without return.

Yet still I know like Mother Teresa did: after all heaven will not be closed for us. Paul had told us very clearly, that our deeds and our belief and unbelief will be noted down in the book of life. God even proves us while we are bearing the pain of separation. And on dedication for our neighbor we probably will work at high performance, while the pain of God?s distance, the icy cold between heaven and earth, seems to eat us up.

Every day I get letters from prisoners, from murderers and thieves, from mothers who have had an abortion and thus have murdered, from lonely and ill people, who seem to choke with their pains and who want to put an end to their lives, from people who have lost their true loves or had to leave them due to divorce, from people who cry for belief.

Shall I tell them the truth of how I feel inside myself. Certainly not. For it looks like that inside of me, I am able to reach these people, in spite of my emptiness, of my pains or just because of that.

If everything is noted down in the book of life, Mother Teresa has filled a large encyclopedia with an uncountable number of volumes. They were opened when she entered heaven, the forth dimension. And then she saw that the emptiness and the supposed separation from God was nothing else but the total and unquestioning succession.

Thus, without comparing myself with this great saint, I will as well wait for the day, when I can see and when I will be told which capital I have accumulated while having felt forsaken and humiliated by God.

Thus I will during all periods of unbelief and separation from God beg for power and mercy and beg that my daily sacrifices and pains will be accepted by God. Mother Teresa never has suppressed this thought, that the sacrifices of her life will even lead her to her destination, to God.

I will return to Mother Teresa once again, to this great saint. There is much more to say about her. And to learn. First of all she is a great saint to me, because she had remained faithful to God in the depths of her humanity and devotion and did not take off the cloth of poverty. Thus she tands above all churches and religions.

If you feel the same while searching for God and getting no answer, do like I do and laugh it away with the words: Dear God, yet again I have misplaced your telefone number.

I wish my readers a wonderful Sunday and nevertheless happiness and gratefulness.

Everything is going to be alright. Until next Friday at this point.

By the way, if you want to make sure that you get my ?Sunday Word? regularly, it is quite easy: please just order a subscription.

Yours,

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

My loyal readers of the "Sunday Word" on this page in this newspaper know that I face the authorities of this country in a very critical way. They know, that I fight for moral and order and that I anxiously wait that the people finally come out of their old ideology and radically change their mentality.

The police of this country has to account for many dark chapters in a special way. That is not easy, for the communist, militaristic structure of the former police continues to have an effect on the present and has left deap roots and wounds in the public bodies of the police.

Thus in Western European media you can still read of corruption and false charges of the police, of torture and rape by the police, of authoritarian and uncivil behaviour. And thus we will notice problems with these civil servants for even a long time, if they are not paid very well finally and by that become independent and incorruptible.

My readers meanwhile know very well, that I   o n l y   and exclusively write for the truth and against the lie. Thus today I have a positive reason for correcting myself, even for changing my mind. It is about the police in Agnita and Iacobeni.

Even some months ago I had to bitterly complain about the moral situation of the police in my article "psychogram of a village". But my initiative then has been successful. The beginning of my personal change of mind. A former policeman, who had settled in Iacobeni, had been sentenced to a compensation of 10 Million Leis. Because I had demanded back stolen goods, he threatened me to break both my legs, if I dared to once again stop my car in front of his house. The ?head? of the local police, who had an affair with the wife of a subordinate policeman and even had his ?colleague? redeployed, had been removed from office by his boss in Sibiu due to my influence. The whole village sighed with relief, for how can such a policeman be a sound authority in a village? Good job. The beginning of the change of an awry mentality.


At four in the night we had to call the police

Two weeks ago somebody broke into our house and our church. At four in the night we had to call the police and I rubbed my eyes: The agents of Iacobeni Agent Principal Eduard Cavalero, the agents Flavius Besta and Andre Ivan were on the spot within a few minutes. At four in the night. They began with their investigations and just a short time later the responsible agent deputy from Agnita, Gabriel Vesa, was on the spot as well.

I rubbed my eyes, for on his way to us he had just picked up the fugitive burglar, friendly invited him to his car and then presented him to us. Almost a comedy. What happened then here has to be described as absolutely professional and expert. The burglar had to take part in the reconstruction of the deed, but always was treated in a civil tone, what in this situation even was difficult for me. I started to think about reasons to indeed treat criminals with violence, I caught myself questioning my own principals. The offender had been taken by surprise, had left a lot of booty and had even begun to break the offertory box. As said before, he had been taken by surprise by our alarm system and in the house by one of our children, who suddenly had become thirsty. He even had organized one of our wheel chairs in order to transport his rich booty. The police reconstructed everything and made pictures as proof.


Denied social rehabilitation

We knew the offender Ladarc Hinyi-Sandor very well. He already has spent a decade in different prisons, has been imposed a ban on the city of Brasov, but nevertheless twice got the chance of a social rehabilitation by our ?League for the Renaissance of Moral Standing?. This chance, however, he treated with contempt. In our house for released prisoners he has already stolen a TV and a coffemaker and he persistently refused to do just a minimal of the work in the sense of this social rehabilitation. Then he, as said before, broke into the house of our foundation in Iacobeni, bagged the keys of the doors and during his hearings announced a repetition of his deed, i. e. ?he would came back in any case?.

Now the police worked quickly, disciplinedly and with professional criminalistics. Do not forget, it was in the middle of the night respectively very early in the morning. We had bundled them out of bed. They showed no tiredness. I was astonished of their airs, their team spirit and the ability to very quickly induce him to make a confession. That is my imagination of the police of a civilization. That is why in Germany it is said: the police, your friend and helping hand.

15 years ago I had once been stopped for speeding by the police in Bucharest. The policeman said, I have to punish you. What do you want to pay? He obviously expected me to bargain and to get a bribe. But I said: Mr. Policeman, I have sinned and you have to punish me?/! He had never heard something like that before. He was so confused that he commanded me to drive on immediately, and namely as fast? I did not have to pay anything.

Much has changed, thank God. The offender was walked off. A bit later Inspector Constantin Dinescu and Chief Inspector Remus Vasilescu from Agnita appeared. They assured themselves that everything had been executed correctly and asked if any questions or complaints had remained open. That in Germany we call ?citizen service?. The police, your friend and helping hand.


Practices of the prosecutor's office Agnita

The offender was introduced to the prosecutor's office in Agnita. Although a severe criminal past life had been registered for this offender, although the police of Agnita had proved the criminal energy of this offender, although he was an repeat offender with a long list of previous convictions and had been released only on probation from prison ahead of time, although he had denied two offers for social rehabilitation, he was not arrested by the prosecutor in Agnita. What, Mr. Prosecutor, would you call a social danger??? I know gypsies in Romanian prisons, first offenders, who were arrested and locked in immediately due to the theft of a bag of potatoes and a hen. They had stolen, because they did not have a job and because their children were hungry?

We will continue to question the practices of the prosecutor?s office in Agnita. For also here it needs changes and professionalism. A prosecutor is not allowed to act at discretion or arbitrarily. ?SibiuStandard? will keep an eye on the prosecutor?s office in Sibiu, for it is not the first time that accusations, like obvious blackmail, have not been acknowledged under criminal law aspects and that therefore the proceedings had been closed. What shall the correct police think, who has spent half the night to prove the social danger of a criminal, who is turned loose then. Of what avail is it, when now finally the police acts correctly, namely as a friend and helping hand of the respectable citizen, who has to be protected. The criminal, however, may already appear again in our house within the next hour, convulse in laughter and demand the delivery of the booty he had to leave at the crime scene due to the police.


Compliments of all citizens for the police

The compliments of the ?League for the Renaissance of Moral Standing?, but also the compliments of all citizens, who are glad, that now also in Romania the police is going to be a friend and helping hand, are for the police of Agnita, the Inspector and the Chief Inspector, the deputy agent and the first agent, as well as the police agents after so many years of fighting against an old ideologized mentality and against incrustation.

We will revisit the topic prosecutor?s office in Agnita in any case.

Until next Friday. Please remain faithful to me and this newspaper, dear readers.

May you be well and may you also have experiences, which make you think, oh, I was wrong, it is going to be better in Romania.

But please do as well write to me, if you have negative experiences, if you are treated unjustly and arbitrarily by authorities. If you have to accept a decision of a prosecutor, which nobody with a common sense of justice can understand or if you see something immoral, that has to be denounced. Or does the burglar Hinyi-Sandor has to harm a human life first, in order to prove his criminal energy. Please send your letter to Father Don Demidoff, 557105 Iacobeni or dondemidoff@web.de

SibiulStandard is the lawyer of the citizens in the district of Sibiu: a friend and helping hand as well.

Have a good and carefree time. Yours, Father Don Demidoff ICCC
In Romania called "Bosco"

Big words at the church congress light words?

the light of Jesus

and the churches,

the light of Jesus and the world,

the light of Jesus and Europe

That will be the topics to be discussed. But those who critically question these are excluded once again. In Sibiu Father Don Demidoff ICCC is shadowed by the Securitate once again: Where are the Christian brothers and sisters? They talk about the light of Jesus but avoid his clear diction.

They prefer the sweetish, soft Jesus and have forgotten, that Jesus has preached love, but was a revolutioner, a rebel, a provocateur as well.

The light of Jesus wants to shine on all. But too many remain in the dark. They are not let into the light of Jesus.

We are far away, too far away from unity and spirituality, and bearing witness, if necessary the painful bearing witness, for Jesus Christ does not take place. The swim among the bulk of ?delegates? and they feel fine. But those outside do not feel fine at all.

We are far away from a just Europe. Turkey is excluded from the European Union, because they execute torture. Romania has been integrated! to Europe since the 1. January 2007 and there torturing in prisons is ?easily? continuing. Because Don Demidoff does not stop to denounce this, he is libeled, offended, harassed, threatened in this European country and his lines are tapped. Where is the solidarity of the sisters and brothers?

We are far from peace in the world. It is not necessary to list where people shoot each other all over the world. Justice is existent in countless slogans written on paper, but we humans ?easily? destroy our creation ourselves.

We are far away from a peaceful Europe. We are obsessed with megalomania and about that forget ordinary Joe, who falls by the wayside, for what is important for the high-ranking people in Brussels and elsewhere, means a disaster for the ordinary and the poor, e. g. in Romania. Industry is thriving enormously and commerce is raising its huge consumers? temples. But only industry and economy are thriving. They squeeze the money out of ordinary Joe who would like to take part only once. Many things are more expensive than in the ?West?, but wages still remain an insult to the employees. Social benefits are treated as a sick joke.

The high-ranking people, the powerful, the brothers mason also in Romania see to it that those who dare to tell the truth are libeled and excluded. Demidoff has won more than 80 lawsuits in Romania and other European countries against libel and intrigues. Altogether he had to be paid 100.000 Euro compensation, among others by ministers as well, which he invested in the restoration of the old basilica in Iacobeni. The Romanian government is teeming with brothers mason, who now often even tout this. They are the ones who darken the light of Jesus. We do not know their god: but isn?t it the antichrist? The shadow of the antichrist against the light of Jesus?

Christians shall not take part in the calling for globalization. The dictatorship of globalization is more dramatic and more painful than the one of communism and in this country they can tell you a thing or two about this. At the cost of social justice the weapon of globalization is directed against the poor. Globalization is just a deceptive word for the whole truth:

The one-world-government, which will focus the power of tyranny to the hands of a few americans,the one-world-religion without the light of Jesus,

the one-world-human, who is created genetically manipulated for this world. Only those who are suitable and able to be employed in the ?new? professions may live anymore.

Jesus Christ, however, wants the individual. He denies the collective of communism, from which people have suffered for decades. You can still see the marks left

and the children, the  new generation, are still indoctrinated. Talk about that in your meetings, pray for the light of Jesus for Romania. Europe, the world: shouldn?t we begin at bit smaller? Although bishops, metropolitans, Catholic and orthodox ones, have sent their fellow brothers to their doom and the protestant ?gentlemen? in the mass media have celebrated and praised to the skies the big leader Ceausescu, you sit together with them in a tent and altogether laugh about those who dare to say that, 17 years after the so-called revolution?

When do you finally not only talk about the light of Jesus, but bring it ? bring it to Sibiu.

When in Sibiu, when in Romania sometime, sooner than expected, there will be the big bang, when the gentlemen of the industry will just close their steel temples after having made their profit, because the working people does not want to be wrung anymore, but demand just wages, and the industry will move on to Moldavia, to Asia, then I would like to publish just this article once more ?

Until then I will continue to report about the harassments which I have to bear here. Or do you actually dare, dear sisters and brothers in the light of Jesus, to invite me yet. This is my e-mail-address: Basilica-Demidoff@web.de

I wish you the gift of the holy spirit. Father Don Demidoff, having left the Roman-Catholic church more than 30 years ago, founder of the Independent, Catholic and Ecumenical Church in Romania, member of the International Council of Community Churches USA.

Welcome to Sibiu, the cultural capital of Europe. Even we, the Christians, which have not been invited to the ecumenical meeting, would like to present our welcome address to you and wish you a pleasant stay in Romania.

Nevertheless you should know the truth: due to a mayor of German origin everything is going well in Sibiu now, but Sibiu is not representative for the whole country. Even if we do not hope for it, we expressly invite you to have a look at the reality of Romania in Iacobeni only a few kilometers from Sibiu or all the other villages, because there are no reports about that in your media. Here in Iacobeni and in the other villages there is abject poverty and non-civilization. Often there is no water and no sanitary equipment, too often there are power blackouts. Jobs are rare and people still have to be patient and have to wait, 16 years after the ?revolution?.

Would you please visit us in the countryside as well.

The interior of our basilica from the 14th century has been totally renovated by compensation money and re-opened to the people as an ecumenical house of worship. Therefore we have not been invited, because we do not moan and argue, but kneel down before our God, no matter of which confession we are, and celebrate mass altogether.

We wish you some blessed days and would very much appreciate, if you went on an excursion to us in Iacobeni.

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

President of the Foundation Casa Don Bosco, home for abandoned children

President of the League for the Renaissance of Moral Standing in Romania

www.depeschedondemidoff.com

Yes, and once again yes: at this point again and again we will deal with the injustice, which is taking place in this country, but especially still in the Romanian prisons. Only talking about that may result in changes. Those who hush up the injustices help those who abuse and suppress humans. And these have the same base motives like those who are imprisoned.

Yes, the criminals have violated the law, they have done harm to us and damaged the society. We have to protect the society from them. We have to shut them off from society for some time. But how long? And under what circumstances? Are we allowed to hold them captive like animals? Are we allowed to beat them, to humiliate them?

We are humans and we treat humans

No, we are not allowed to. Never. We are humans and we have to treat humans like humans, no matter what they have done. Who takes revenge on them or even abuses them, does nothing less than to prove that we all are not better than them, who have hurt us.

Torture is practised in Romanian prisons. We brutalize these people even more than they are already now. We tell them, that there is only one outlook for them, to push them down to the abyss. We do that, being Christians? How can they learn what Christian love means or forgiveness and that also they have the right to social rehabilitation, to amends, to the return into this society.

An input for our society

If we break them during imprisonment, if we make animals out of humans, if we teach hatred and violence, then we are all criminals and not worth to be called humans. Imprisonment is not the time of destruction, but the time of giving new heart to them. Imprisonment is a sign: reflect about yourself, mend your way, prepare yourself for a new life, ask for forgiveness: just social rehabilitation. But they have to be given the opportunity for it during imprisonment. Therefore we need the most qualified psychologists, not the pseudo psychologists with military ranks, the most qualified counselors and humanly strong and unsoiled leadership characters. Priests, who even love the criminal and recognize Jesus in him (? I was in prison) and who take care that even during a very long time of imprisonment the contact to the family is not interrupted. They must have the chance for further education and qualification during this time. Our special concern should be with the sick persons and not the opposite: withdrawal of medication, in order that they die earlier and there is the chance to once again get rid of a criminal. It is an input for all of us, for our society.

Romania still is far from humanitarianism

Romania, the country of a bestial dictator, still is far from realizing, accepting humanitarianism. If egg thiefs are imprisoned for a cruelly long time, because they cannot afford a lawyer, if due to corruption amounting to billions the bigwigs have to scent the air of a prison for three days pro forma only, if a hog house anywhere in Europe is more comfortable and more hygienic than Romanian prison cells, if prisoners are threatened and intimidated and beaten, because they dare to complain about their conditions of detention, if prisoners are not even allowed to choose and see a priest whom they have confidence in, then all this means a permanent violation of human rights.

Romania, stop the revenge. Hard in a country where Christian love still is suspect. How poor is this country, because Christian love is still suspect to be a screen. A screen for what? A screen, because Ceausescu has set the rules and imposed these ideas on the people. 16 years after the revolution Ceausescu and Elena are still living among us.

Are we not ashamed ??

We must help these stigmatized ones. Yes, you too. Most of them have been born on the margins of society and their criminal ways have been presaged by birth. Did anybody ask them if they wanted to be born in a disadvantaged group or not rather as son or daughter of a corrupt Bolshevik? Did the state apparatus provide a job for them in order to not become criminals? Did they ever have the chance of integration? Many have stolen because of hunger or because of the hunger of their children.

Are we not ashamed of outcasting them, pushing them away, afflicting them?

We hate them. And with every year being imprisoned their own hatred of the society and of the people increases, deadly hatred. They will leave through the prison gates after their time and face the society with this hatred in them until the next murder. For this next murder, however, all of us have to take responsibility: you and me.

Instead of revenge we need social rehabilitation. In our own interest. For our own safety.

Today you will be with me in paradise ?

Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with HIM to be executed. They crucified HIM, along with the criminals - one on his right, the other on his left. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at HIM: Aren't you the Messiah, the king of the Jews? Save yourself and us! But the other criminal rebuked him. Don't you fear God, he said, since you are under the same sentence? We are suffering justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus answered him, I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise. Luke 23,32 New Testament

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

Father Don Demidoff demands the immediate stop of torture

Instead of the Sunday Word

The fight is going on. Stop the torture!

The efforts of Father Don Demidoff, to reveal the torturers of the Romanian dungeons, are enriched with new elements, of which the president of the League for the Renaissance of Moral Standing makes the prosecutors who are investigating aware.

In an open letter Father Don Demidoff sent to the prosecutors who investigate the case of torture in the prison of Codlea, the president of the LIGA demands a quick appointment for the hearing of those prisoners which are prepared to bring an action against those persons who either execute torture or allow for the torturing of detainees. In the sense of an authentic democracy where the maximum penalty may be imprisonment but not physical or mental blows or pressure, Father Don Demidoff wants to prove that there still is the possibility of failure in revealing the torturers.

"On this account we write to you requesting the immediate resumption of the proceedings. Moreover, we demand to hear these prisoners in the presence of the lawyer and the president of the Liga according to the concluded protocol. We are surprised by the fact that you have heard some more prisoners during our absence and contrary to the concluded agreement. Thus on July 20, 2007, the detainee Moisii Ionel was heard. But just in this situation our presence is very important. We presuppose that the Liga may trust in you further on and that the proceedings will be continued objectively and correctly", Father Don Demidoff expresses his opinion in the letter.

In order that the investigation which is going to bring the truth to light will run well, Father Don Demidoff asks the prosecutors to organize the hearings of the prisoner heard until now under different preconditions – without the presence of a representative of the prison of Codlea – as the heard prisoners obviously express reservations about him and therefore do not want to admit the tortures especially those which have been executed by the guards of the high security prison in the district of Brasov.

"The detainee Giuga Gheorghe who during the first hearing was only prepared to tell the truth after the representative of the prison had left the room on your instruction, will have to be heard once again by all means. The prisoner suffers from a serious heart disease and after the hearing he had been tortured mentally by not administering him his vital medicine by the doctor of the prison and by not making available the medicine for him, which the Liga had bought for more than 3 million Lei. Thus the administration of the prison may be guilty of acting as accessory to murder of a detainee", Father Don Demidoff writes in his letter.

Therefore Father Don Demidoff requests that the six detainees heard until now in the presence of a representative of the prison are heard once again, this time without the attendance of employees of the prison, so that they will be able to tell the truth! "The guard has no right to be present in the room where the hearing is taking place or to eavesdrop at the door as it has happened before. The detainees must have the right to explain how they have been threatened and how they have been beaten on their way to the prosecutor’ office. Additionally, it would be important that the documents concerning the torturing of the individual detainees, being available for the prosecutor’s office for some time now, are included in the proceedings and presented to the detainees in every hearing".

Attempts of cover-up 

Father Don Demidoff claims that by some actions the administration of the prison of Codlea tries to intimidate those prisoners in different ways, who are prepared to contribute to the revealing of persons who are guilty of torturing. "Certainly it is no coincidence that during the recent months detainees who were to be heard by the prosecutors’ office have been increasingly transferred to other prisons for no reason. It is clear that this is an attempt to prevent the hearing of the prisoners by the prosecutor’s office of Brasov. We demand that these detainees are immediately relocated to Codlea in order to be heard according to the concluded agreement", Father Don Demidoff writes.

As a result of the signs received, Father Don Demidoff states that the postponing of the hearings will lead to more and more seriously physical and mental torture for the prisoners who have decided to testify. Also very important is the appearance of a former prisoner who has made an affidavit before a notary describing the torture the detainees are exposed to. "In order to not endanger his life, his name and home will not be published until his hearing", Father Don Demidoff writes, who also requests the extension of the list of detainees to be heard.

Where is the police protection?

Finally several threats against the LIGA, some of them even against the life of Father Don Demidoff, have been uttered. "The LIGA requests for immediate personal security by the police." From the letter of the lawyer in Strasbourg it can be seen that he also knows the fact that due to his dissident statements the president of the Liga is in peril of his life, as he has received threats by phone as well as by the internet. The Liga has already filed an action at the public prosecutor’s office in Sibiu.

Nevertheless, the president of the League for the Renaissance of Moral Standing, Father Don Demidoff, claims that he trusts in the fairness of the investigations of the prosecutors in Brasov.

cassette quotation

"Give permission for the claims of more than 150 prisoners and immediately allow Father Don Demidoff to provide moral support for the detainees and the detainees to execute their right to religious freedom."

Europe intervenes

In November a commission of the Council of Europe will discuss the petition of the LIGA concerning the torturing of the detainees in Romanian prisons. The decision of the European institution results from numerous alarm signals on the part of Father Don Demidoff. Such petitions have also been sent to institutions in Romania, the parliament has established a commission in order to analyze these deeds. Also the ministry of justice will be heard on this matter by the parliamentarians.

Father Don Demidoff ICCC

I was hungry and thirsty, I needed clothes and I was sick, I was a stranger and I was in prison. New Testament Matthew 25,36 …

Iulian, one of my children, has sent Nicolae to my car. Nicolae is 18 and lives on the street in Agnita. He has to leave the home due to his age. He does not know his father, his mother lives in Sibiu together with another man. The mother does not want to host him. Then he finds accomodation at his grandmother’s in Sibiu, who however sends him away after a little while. She demands a contribution of 400.000 Lei from him  d a i l y.

So he is back in Agnita. He is hungry, he slept on a park bench, every now and then he could have a wash at a friend of his. He has no spare clothes. People treat him like a stranger, shall he steal and end up in prison?

He looks sad standing in front of me, his eyes with a blank look, his reactions apathetic. I tell him “get in” and take him with me to Iacobeni. He needs some days until a faint smile flashes over his face.

Is that Christ himself whom I invite into my car? Did not HE say about himself that he is hungry and thirsty, without clothes, a stranger and in prison? And you, he continues asking, what have you done?

16 years ago I began my work in this country, recognizing Christ in those, who otherwise fall through the cracks. I came as a stranger and I have remained a stranger. Nobody ever has expressed his gratitude for my dedication, on the contrary I had to face suspicion, harassment and offenses. The everlasting communists took me for a spy, a terrorist, a dealer for children’s organs, and I had to carry on more than 80 lawsuits in order to protect “my” children and myself. That is the result of the communism, a barbarian, Stalinist and inhuman communism. People had been transformed, deformed from the individual to the collective. And I myself came within the three rules of this ideology: Watch out for strangers, watch out for those who “pretend” to do good and watch out for the celibate, catholic priests, who had all been murdered in the dungeons of torture, if they did not become orthodox.

The brutalization of the people over here, who still do not care for the sick and the hungry, can be noticed until today. It is collectivism, which has made people what they are now, collectivism which disregards the individual. God, however, wants the individual. God has created the individual. He knows our names before we are. Therefore people cannot understand why „Bosco“ has such a big mouth and why he again and again brings up the painful subject of collectivism.

This country will only get well when the individual will finally be in the focus of interest. When politics finally understand that a nation consists of individuals and that people are people and no collectives. The individual meets the individual. Everybody has to be conscious of his own responsibility towards others, but also for himself. The collective is anonymous, the individual is a person, a personality. The collective does not cry, does not laugh, my neighbor cries and laughs.

Nicolae may stay in my house as long as he wants to and as long as he exactly observes these principles: the rules of the people living together here. And he will learn to give something to eat and to drink to his neighbor, to give a bed and a room to the stranger and the sick in order to save them from prison.

Before the „revolution“ no foreigner was allowed to enter this country and scarcely anybody was allowed to leave it. But how many foreigners have left this country after the “revolution”, because they wanted to live God’s commandments, exemplify them through their own lives, but were offended and detested for that. Always on the grounds that a humanitarian is “dangerous”, that he hides something behind a screen.

Looked at that way was or is the communist doctrine stronger than the gospel of Jesus Christ?

No, it is not. Even the apostles had been suspected, beaten, chased, imprisoned and killed. But therewith they bore witness to the love of Jesus and His message for the individual. The individual accepted and loved by God. Communism did not love anybody. Communism tortured people. And it still does today.  

Continue cursing on me, suspecting me, accusing me, make my life a misery and set this ridiculous Securitate on me, because in the sense of Jesus I love my neighbor, because I cannot bear seeing him hungry and thirsty, because I am sorry for him, when he suffers pain and the rain falls on his skin, because he does not have any clothes, because he has to steal in order to survive and therefore ends up in prison. 

I know your tricks. Your communist tricks. Have you still not demasked my screen after 16 years now? Of course not, as there is none but the one who is called Jesus Christ. Have you still not found out who backs me up after 16 years now, as the metropolitan of Sibiu, Antonie, did ask me once. Have you still not demasked the one “who stands behind me”? Of course not, as there is no shadow, there is Jesus Christ only who reigns above us all.

No, none of you is going to drive me away from here. I am not afraid of you. I am afraid of God only who will ask me, why I had run away. Why I had closed my eyes towards the sick, the hungry, the ones in prison and the ones without clothes.

Come on, change the front, follow me, as I am on the good side. I annunciate the gospel and the love of Jesus to you. I wish you energy and strength for the coming week.

Yours,

Father Don Demidoff, in Romania called “Bosco”

(By the way, I am looking for an office accommodation for the “League for the Renaissance of Moral Standing”. If you have any information concerning this, would you please call 0269 510 566 or write an e-mail to dondemidoff@web.de)

Father Don Demidoff

My campaign against the torture in Romanian prisons has made an impact.

The parliamentary commission for human rights has heard me, I have been received in "audience" by the vice general director of the national penitentiary Mr. Gheorge Spaiuc and the district attorney of the court of appeals in Brasov has begun to hear the first ones of 45 prisoners who have to suffer torture.

Many people, however, believe that commitment for criminals "does not pay, that they have to bear the blame themselves, that they had it coming to them". Those who argue like that are the same who complained to Jesus Christ about the whore and whom the LORD just answered, "let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her".

Criminals have to be punished

Yes, it is true, criminals have to be punished and criminal acts which violate others or their belongings have to be punished by imprisonment. That is beyond all question. But what weighs on me here in Romania is the fact that poor people, especially those who can not afford a lawyer, are punished by imprisonment more easily and above all they are punished much more severe than those who have money or reputation. I know many poor who have stolen a sack of potatoes or a chicken for their hungry children and therefore got a punishment of 7 years of imprisonment. This very fact is psychic torture. I have visited many of these families whose husband, father or brother has to suffer worst conditions in prison and who is not able to keep in touch, because neither the family can afford a bus ticket nor the prisoner a calling card. That is psychic torture, too.

I have frequently described the conditions in Romanian prisons before in this newspaper. Pigs in Germany may live under better conditions. I do not want to recur. But psychic and physical torture is inacceptable. In a democratic constitutional state, definitely in a member state of the European Union, imprisonment is the maximum punishment allowed. For years the European Union has been hesitating to take up the membership of Turkey due to torture practised there. Why did they take up the membership of Romania then? Why do they apply double standards? The president of the European Commission, Dr. José Barroso, answered me that currently they could not weigh in, that Romania needs some more time. That seems to be a daring answer. When recently in Germany a young prisoner had been tortured and killed by his cell mates the whole of Europe was troubled and weighed in. In Romania thousands are tortured, primarily by the prison staff, and Europe is not able to weigh in. Perhaps it is not possible for them to weigh in due to many reasons. Perhaps it is not possible for them to weigh in, because they have soiled their hands together with the Americans with maintaining illegal prisons for terror suspects in Romania in the years of 2002 until 2005. As Dick Marty, special prosecutor of the Council of Europe, has confirmed and therewith has put an end to the long lasting lying, Iliescu himself had authorized these illegal prisons and given assistance for establishing and maintaining these terrible operations.

Europe and America shut their eyes to the facts

Europe and America have disregarded law and in return for that they now shut their eyes to the facts that in Codlea, Jilava, Ajud etc. the torturing is going on.

In these prisons too many young detainees die, because "they fall out of their beds or suffer from cardiac insufficiency". We, the people, are so stupid to believe all that.

Meanwhile prisoners from all Romanian prisons write letters to me. I am not able to answer them all any more. It is a horror movie playing daily behind the walls of the prisons. In Codlea it is Section V, where prisoners are undressed, bound hand and foot to an iron bed in a caged and knocked down by two or three guards without being able to defend themselves. Then they are left on their own without medical care, without food and without being able to go to the bathroom.

I have hundreds of documents of a system available which was regarded to be terminated after Stalin, Hitler or Ceaucescu. I can hear the cries for help of the young and old prisoners over this long distance. Almost all the guards in Codlea are related to each other, so that it is not possible complain to a neutral one. When I critized these practices I was not allowed any more to enter the prison in order to mentally support the prisoners. After that 150 prisoners requested my return in writing. In return they were tortured even more for keeping contact with me. They were not allowed to use the calling cards I had sent them and my mail to them I get back with the inscription "not in our list".

In which country, in which century do we actually live?

In which country, in which century do we actually live? Even the mass media remain silent to my reproaches. Is there nobody in this country who declares his solidarity with me against this barbarism. Only a representative of the parliament, the priest drd. Ioan Aurel Rus, has backed me up in the commission and has confirmed my accusations.

Now the public prosecutor Benga starts his investigations. I wish him courage and assertiveness. I wish him neutrality and respect for human dignity which we are not allowed to take away from anybody, not either from a criminal, because just he has to learn about human dignity.

I wish for fellow combatants in this country who fight for a human penal system, a penal system after which the delinquents have the chance for rehabilitation and not the other way round are released to society with hate and disgust. How can these tortured believe in a country and its authorities, if these behave like pigs and criminals themselves. Those who have been in prison once will then never have a chance for a further humane life.

In one of the following articles of the "Sunday Word" I will try to describe which structures in our prisons facilitate brutalization and how to prevent further escalations. The present prisons in Romania are counterproductive and make criminals to criminals forever.

Prisons are the "haut école" for crime

The prisons are ruled by violence and violence is taught there. Prisons are the "haut école" for crime. The consequences in Codlea and elsewhere in Romania prove that.

The administration of a prison needs the most competent persons, the assistance of prisoners needs psychological trained specialists. In Codlea,  where the director, the psychologist and the orthodox priest still have military ranks, even if they do not coquet with them anymore, the inhuman dictatorship is sealed.

As I said before, in one of the following “Sunday Words” I will think about methods of rehabilitation, a modern penal system and protection of society against released delinquents.

Does anybody want to challenge them for their positions?

Unfortunately and I already know that today that the responsible persons in Bucharest and Codlea are not interested at all, because this could mean that somebody wants to challenge them for their positions.

And first of all a fundamental reform of the penal system and of the prevention of crime will not be for free. But as the high officials which avail themselves whatever they can get, who are hand in glove with each other, cover up for each other and are not in danger to be unmasked, are not interested in the situation of the prisoners at all, we will still hear the cries for help of the tortured in Romania for a long time.

When I confronted the vice general director of the national administration of penitentiary in Bucharest Mr. Spaiuc with the fact that the letters of the central administration of penitentiary were not true, e. g. the statement, every prisoner would have an own bed now, the situation however had not changed, this lie was justified by the fact, that also "in Romanian hospitals two patients often had to share a bed".

Well, my dear readers, if that is the level of our discussion concerning humanization of our whole society – nice prospects, poor Romania!

You Romania with your rich history and culture, you Romania, which have been oppressed and tortured over and over again far too long, you Romania, which finally have a right to freedom and self-realization, send all of them packing who do not yet want to allow that dictatorship is at an end. And beware of those who come from outside and cover you with tricks, as e. g. illegal prisons for terrorists.

See you next Friday

Father Don Demidoff

Good Morning, my dear reader, in the usual place, Page 5.

Last Friday I confessed that "I am not in fear" and I let you into the secret, why I am not in fear. I also demanded you: to have no fear and to fight against it as you fight against AIDS and plague. Sing the song of truth, I said.

Nevertheless most people consider several fears to be omnipresent, although nobody is talking about. Fears are part of the everyday-life of too many people. Yes, they are living with them as they eat their daily bread.

But while getting accustomed to the fear you lose sight of the fact, how this fear controls our lives and above all how due to this fear we are at the mercy of those who want to threaten others and dominate them. You actually become a puppet of those who want to control us.

That was very obvious during the time of communism and is still common among the neo-communists. So people slide from their fear of yesterday to the same fear of today.

The old and the new communists did and do manipulate people. And these manipulated people are overready to leave the responsibility for their own lives to others. People always ask me, as I said before: why are you not in fear? Well, the answer is clear: because God is my Lord and Master, who protects me and boundlessly loves me. That gives me an enormous self-confidence. But the people who lack this self-confidence are characterized by their fears and they think they are helpless and not able to find a way out of their problems. But everybody possesses the power to find a way out.

My work shows me: I am self confident, because I am creative and productive. Nothing and nobody causes me fear, except for our heavenly Creator. The one who is in fear is already blocked in the first place, is not productive or creative any more, is not able to keep track of his life and does not see any way out. Everywhere it is dark, every way seems to be obstructed.

Now we have to check those who try to threaten us. They are the people who want us to hurt, to lose our own selves, in order to take over, to occupy us. And thus he/she may control us.

Of course I am exposed to those attempts as well as most of the people. But only to the attempts. There are the rulers, the employers, there are the supposed friends, there are the new heralds of salvation in the cults, there are the mass media, there are the medical science and pharmaceutical industry, there are politics, ideologies and illusions, there is the marketing of consumption seeming to be a new gospel.

You may buy everything?

"You may buy everything", if you only believe these persuaders, these thieves of our selves, and if you surrender to them and let them control you. They want us to be dependant on them, they want to control us.

So, you already see, it is not about the fear, which makes us howl, which causes us chattering of teeth. It is about the subtle feelings which we sometimes do not even realize or push to the back of our minds. But repression does mean a solution neither.

As a child in Germany I learned the virtues of honesty, self-discipline, and order. I learned reliability, honor, truthfulness. Have a look at your circle of friends and acquaintances. Lying is a matter of course, not the truth. Why? If somebody tells you he will come at 12.00 o?clock tomorrow, in this country you do not know what year he is talking about. Theft does not mean theft, you just have completed what you need and do not yet own. A lie does not mean a lie, you were just kidding. Where does that lead to? To the fear! Father Don Demidoff ICCC

Over and over again people, especially my readers, ask me where I take the courage to point out the facts and incidents occuring in this country and again and again to describe unjustice as unjustice, no matter who commits it.

To tell you the truth: I am not in fear. Fear is a bad advisor. Fear of humans and things actually is cowardice, no, even more it is disbelief.

If I know to be safe in the almightiness of God well and truly, why should I be in fear? Why? In the most difficult situations, especially in Romania, God has never let me down. During the last 16 years there have been libel, offense, attacks on my life and limb, suspicion, imputation and much more. Once I had been arrested and they wanted to shoot me in the woods. And because I have the Basilica in Iacobeni restored in a way that people, especially gypsies, may use it as a Lord?s house again, a stick-in-the-mud communist of the "Tribuna" wrote: "Bosco has disgraced the church." The consequences were prosecution by the the criminal investigation department, the monument protection department and several judicial authorities. The former ministers of health and of the Interior planned to remove me from their country, because I had a "too big mouth". They lost the cases, I was allowed to stay in the country and they had to pay a considerable amount of money for compensation of pain and suffering to me. Without fear - I took out an execution against the cars and the accounts of the ministers by the marshal, otherwise I was waiting for my money still today. I invested the compensation of pain and suffering in the restoration of the basilica of Iacobeni. This is my tribute to heaven which has protected me and which has shown me the way to live in this country without fear.Today I let you into the secret

No, if it is about the truth I am not in fear. I am not in fear that God would let me down some time, I am not in fear of too big lies and corruption, I am not in fear of losing a case, which serves justice, I am not in fear of poverty or loneliness, illness or even death, I am not in fear of other people, neither of those on the top, I am not even in fear of being misunderstood.

You know what? Today I let you into the secret, why I am not in fear. God himself has the fear driven out of me. Because God rewards my unconditional dedication to HIM, because HE knows that I do not have in mind anything selfish, because he knows that I never have got rich at others? property and that I never have stolen anything. This absolute fearlessness is nothing else but the total dedication to our Father in heaven. As a Catholic priest I have accepted to be celibate, to do without an own family and to put myself into the service for God. Therefore I am not in fear. Of course, I am just a human, afflicted with all sorts of human faults and moods. But when it comes to the point that I have to be a guide for others then I am fearless, then God alone is my compass.

With the heavenly father I may talk about everything, HE always listens to me at any place and there always is the thought of HIM instead of thoughts of fear. Being close to HIM I denounce injustice and people who misuse others. Isn?t it our responsiblity, yours too, to do that, if we entirely obey the Commandments of God?

The power of evil, violence, lies, theft, alcoholism and adultery constantly beset us, they use every opportunity to look for our weak points and to invade our insides, our hearts and our thoughts. The evil permanently creeps around us, sends us false promises and temptations and most of all wants to frighten us in order to dominate us. And this fear in turn causes new fear, depression, disbelief, suspicion and betrayal. Fear is an open door for the devil.Fight against the fear as you fight against AIDS and plague

Therefore God over and over again encourages us to pray to him for the absolute, pure love, the love that expels all fear.

Fight against the fear, HE says, as you fight against plague and AIDS. You say Yes, Yes or No, No, but in between there is nothing. The one who is full of fear destroys the special connection to ME, thus only the one who is fearless is able to entirely commit himself to me. The least worries, the merest doubts, the bitterness of disappointments violate this connection of the loving nearness to our God.

Therefore we have to do our utmost to fight against the fear. Also depression, pessimism and disappointment are signs of fear and they darken the purity of our connection to God. Fight against the fear. For the sake of trueness: fight, love and win.

God says: accept everything by me at any time. Bear in mind, that nothing else is provided or even arranged by my divine will. Please do not forget that I am the LORD of that petty, daily incidents, too. Take your choice: Follow ME or follow the fear. If you follow the fear you will have lost. Stop or move forward, but never go back. The one who goes back follows his fear. God says, you may live without fear due to my love for you humans.Sing the song of truth God is the LORD of the grain and of the snow flake just as well. You have to realize that, you have to always know that at any place. If things do not work as well as you have expected them, please do not become discontented or disbelieving. The grain is subject to special laws as well as the snow flake. The grain falls to the earth and dies. The snow flake already melts on the leave of a tree. The one who is without fear thoroughly surrenders to MY Commandments, God says.

Therefore you neither have to be in fear of the evil. The evil may only hit those who hurt others, who do not seek shelter from God and who believe in lies. I know from my rich life, dear reader, that all that is not a question of emotion or sentimentalism, but a matter of fact verified by my own life.

Now then, if you want to be fearless, if you want to get rid of any fear, you have to know, you have to believe, that I have exemplified this to you through my own life. I have overcome the Way of the Cross and the Cross. My power is in a dimension which you are not yet able to realize. But because of that, forget your fear. Trust in me. Start to trust in ME regarding these petty daily things, it will be a learning process leading to a thorough internalization. You will see it. You will laugh about the lie and the fear and you will see that you will always be true concerning the big issues of life, too ? totally fearless.

Do not get caught in lies, in evil, in jealousy or envy. Do not propagate conflicts and keep away from them. Look for harmony with ME, your God. Do not sing the song of this world. Sing the song of truth, of fearless truth. It is as simple as that, God says.

See you next Friday, dear reader. Now you understand, why on Fridays I tell you nothing but the truth at this point. Jesus says: Only truth will free you. Therefore do not ask me, where I take the courage to confront you with the truth in this newspaper. I am not in fear of the powerful of the world but only that God will not love me anymore. I am not in fear of what people can do to me but of violating Gods truth. But many people do not like this truth.

Enjoy yourself exercising the truth. You will have a good time just as I have.

Yours Father Don Demidoff ICCC, also known as "Don Bosco"

Basilica in Iacobeni

International Council of Community Churches USA

League for the Renaissance of Moral Standing in Romania

Foundation Casa Don Bosco for abandoned children

Actually, I still suffer from the silly illusion that, after Romania has been integrated into the European Union, we will shortly see signs of improvement and progress in this country with its wonderful and gentle nature. I still cherish the illusion that the people in Romania have to be just as the nature of this country: gentle, peaceful, gracious. But this characterization is only true for the minor part of the people here. Progress? Change of mentality? Forget it!

I love this wonderful country, but it often feels like stomachache. No, no, most of the people are not to be blamed for that at all. And it is because of this knowledge that I have been staying here for 16 years now: the people are not to be blamed for it.

Brood of vipers

In the bible you find a more precise description for these oppressors of humans: brood of vipers.

Most of the people here are still frightened: by the oppressors of humans. These are the stick-in-the-muds, the communists and the new ones: the neo-communists and the mafiosi. 75.000 files of the Securitate are not yet released due to ?national security?, as reported by the journalist Marius Oprea from Brasov. But in truth the so-called national security is nothing else but the prevention of true democracy in Romania. Now Romania is in Europe, now they are well-set: the oppressors of yesterday and of today, the communists and the neo-communists and the mafiosi. They act in harmony, these guys. The filling of important posts with high-ranking officers of the former Securitate, which has just got a new name. Is it surprising then that e. g. the administration of the prison in Codlea, even the psychologist Staier and the orthodox priest hold hidden military ranks? Is it surprising then that they ? in their contempt for humans ? bash the prisoners which are tied up hand and foot. And the minister of justice Tudor Chiuariu, new to the office and maybe only unsuspecting, and the general director of the central administration of penitentiary, general director Alexandru Serban, of course do not know anything. They would rather bite their lips than to say the word torture. Is it possible that the 33-year-old prisoner and member of the Securitate Crivat had to die in Codlea, because he knew too much and wanted to ?back out??

And Brussels keeps silent. And will soon be ashamed of the new member Romania. The embassadors of Sweden, England, France and the Netherlands have quite recently requested a more rigorous policy of the European Commission towards Bucharest. Towards the brood of vipers.

The conditions imposed to Romania for the accession to the EU were unprecedentedly severe, but they knew it, didn?t they?

The majority of people is forced to remain frightened, you rarely find happiness in their faces, the fear remains. For me it is an unexplainable fear. Shoot these oppressors to the moon finally and then you do not need to be frightened anymore.

Only four examples from Agnita of the last few days:

My experiences of everyday life in Agnita, the town next to Iacobeni, would fill a book. Here only four of them:

The first example:

In the grocery ?Tania? people are sulky. None of the employees says Hello or Thank you or Bye, bye. You feel unwelcome, as if bothering them. If you buy bigger units

 g. for my children?s home), they really ask you what you are going to do with that quantity. Just imagine that would happen in Germany or France. The store would collapse in a short time, because there were no customers anymore. Do these people at ?Tania?s? not know that the customers bring the money for the maintenance of the store and the salaries of the employees? The cashier is so sulky that you would rather leave your goods there in order to run off. While entering the prices into the cash desk she screws up her face as if the pushbuttons did hurt her. Why do people still go shopping in such a store? Of course these things also happen in other stores and restaurants. Awful! I want to relax. In Germany it has been known for ages that the guests do not only visit a restaurant in order to eat something ? they could do that at home as well ? but they are looking for relaxation, atmosphere, company, ambiente, experience, contact. I do not know a single restaurant in Agnita I would like to go to anymore. The sulky waiters will cause you a stomachache already before eating.

The second example:

The Romanian post acts in a modern way, in a European one. But nevertheless it is the post of the communists. Also here they do not know, not at all at the post office in Agnita, to appreciate the customers. We are integrated in Europe, but the waiting lines in front of the counters still remind you of the times when even stamps were running short. The counters are still so narrow and small, because you need distance from the customer, the applicant, the one who has to wait, the one, who has to be oppressed, because he really brings his money. Of course also here they do not know that the customers bring the money for the salaries of the employees, do they? And there are enough counters. But these remain closed, because it is necessary that the customer has to wait. So it was and so it is the communism. The ideology of waiting lines.

In Sibiu, the cultural capital of Europe, the luxury hotels rocket high now. What is going to happen with them, when the cultural year is over? But that should not bother me. In Iacobeni, 70 kms from there, it is not yet possible to make an international telephone call, people do not have running water and have to use an outhouse in the garden. Letters, in which we demand this issue of the European conditions, are not answered at all. The subject just does not have the right to an answer. Five times I wrote letters to the senators and the members of parliament in Bucharest asking them for their intervention concerning the torturing in the prisons. Not a single one has given a single answer to me. Those up there, we down here.

They are unfriendly ad nauseam. And when I naively ask them: Are you angry? I really get the answer: No, only serious. I do not know if I shall cry or laugh. According to the regulations they have installed a ramp for handicapped people in front of the post office. If anybody wants to go up there, he first has to learn mountaineering, and if he wants to get out of the post office by this way, there are no brakes so effective on a wheel chair, which could prevent him from directly dashing forward into the street.

Before Easter we bought 12.000 stamps for donation mailings. Because our foundation had been informed ? after three inquiries ? that now also in the European Romania the fees for printed matters were the same abroad. There was no printed information or explanation. Forget it. The letters were completed, the corners of the envelopes cut off (where does anybody else do that in Europe?) and the stamps affixed. Stamps worth 3.000 Euros. Then they gave us back all the letters. Cold as ice. Grinning and sneering. The printed matters did not comply with the Romanian regulations. Of course they could not have explained that to us   b e f o r e . And of course they neither did take back the now unusable wrongly affixed stamps. Dictatorship of the communists. They still treat people as they like to do it. But they are not prosecuted and do not have to account for anything. They cover up for each other, they get away with everything, nothing may insult them. Of course we have initiated legal action for compensation against the director in Sibiu, Nelu Tranbitar, and the director in Agnita, Anuta Piros. Up to now I have won all cases concerning compensation before the Romanian courts which have turned for the better ? Thank God! The post will refund the stamps, my journey to Germany where I delivered my letters personally, the doctor whom I needed, because I was so upset that I had a problem with my heart once again, and the lawyer I need in order to win this case, too. And now they do what they were used to do during communism, they threaten the weakest link in the chain, the employee in the post office of the village Iacobeni, who had got the instructions attested by witnesses before. Why do they not have, like all over Europe, where customers are taken seriously and cared about, clear and written conditions, e. g. for mass printed matters, which could be read before and which are precise and transparent. What is all that secretiveness even concerning stamps?

Make finally way also in the post offices for the young people full of the joys of life who eagerly await the real democracy, but have to bore themselves in the streets!

The third example:

I am on the phone. One of my children comes in all of a dither and says: Father, they are going to cut off the power. I answer: they may wait three minutes until I am finished, I will pay immediately. But all of a sudden the line is gone dead, the system is down, the light, the cold store without power. The water pumps without power. The children without water. I tell them, you are barbarians, this is a children?s home. In every Western country there is a written announcement at least one week before, giving the date, when the power is cut off, if there is no payment until then. And in a children?s home they never would cut off the power. I ask for their names. They deny the answer. I ask them, if they are communists. They answer: Yes, we are communists. I drop everything, visitors waiting for me, and rush to the ?SA Electric de Lucru Agnita?. Of course the responsible employee Mr. Moraru is not present once again. I am told he is on terrain. Meanwhile I have learned what the empty phrase ?on terrain? means in communism: to cut work and official duty. The cashier where I pay my electricity bill (60 millions old Lei) is very friendly, but of course she is not the responsible one. Who is willing to accept responsibility in communism? The cash desk hall reminds me to the worst times under Stalin, dirty walls, a beggar?s bench for sitting, the counter again so small, that it is hardly possible to recognize the face of the cashier. The stairs leading to the cash desk hall are unacceptable, especially for elder people. If it is true, that the managers of the power supply companies get a monthly salary of 10.000 Euros and more, you know what I mean when talking about mafiosi. In the cash desk hall I talk to an old woman, who due to her retirement pay may only light a single bulb. They have cut off her power without prior notice, too, her only source of light. She is handicapped, could hardly come to the ?Alea Castanilor? and above all has to climb this broken stairs.

After I have paid my bill, they shortly come back to unlock the power, of course without prior notice. They literally escape from the lot, presumably they do not want to be asked once again if they are communists. And I ask myself, what kind of people are those, who arbitrarily cut off the power of a children?s home. Oh well, I forgot: communists and neo-communists. They obtain satisfaction when the subject suffers and keeps silent.

And the new mafiosi who do not gave and still not give a damn for the lives of children and old people. I am furious. I make no pretence of it. Is it surprising then that people are still depressed?

The forth example:

Have I really found avowing communists in Agnita in the main street ?Avram Iancu?? Now I want to know how avowing communists look like. If there are some I would rather prefer them to the old reactionary die-hards with the new labels. An avowing communist I could take to task, couldn?t I? Discuss with him?

Through the entrance of a factory I catch sight of a big complex ?Agnitex? with a slogan written on its wall just as big: ?Traiasca Partidul Comunist Romania, long live the communist party of Romania?. I am alarmed. I get out my camera, I have to record that. Otherwise nobody will believe that in Germany or wherever in Europe. The doorman comes out and is going to bar me from entering the yard, he puts his hand before my camera and denies me the access. I say, but this is public and suddenly the communists know what now is private, off-line and defer to it. I am just leaving the entry area when a certain Gheorge Barbat nervously approaches me. He is gesticulating, shouting and raving. Why I take the liberty of entering, I was a ?stinking deceiver? (Escroc inputit).

Thus it was and thus it is in communism: Catholic priests are stinking deceivers. Just 20 years ago the Catholic priests were imprisoned and tortured. Their skeletons, as well as those of bishops, left the prisons in shoe boxes. Now I begin to ask myself, what does actually happen in this huge factory complex? How did this ?Barbati? come into the property of this complex? Where did they get the money from after the so-called revolution? What things have we heard about the former Securitate members! About their close links to the arabian mafia until 1996, about illegal smuggling of fuel during the civil war in Kosovo and about the illegal arms deals with Iran, Iraq and Africa.

The hiring of high ranking officers after 2001. In the economy they have occupied the key positions, the former members of the ?intelligence service?. And according to the soviet model the communist property was networked with the new democratic parties. Why is Mr. Barbat so much bothered by my photographing his building, why? In town I am told that just once in a while socks are still being knitted here. How is he able then to keep this big complex running?

As long as in this country they have not come to terms with the past, I do not see any chance for the people in the street, for the the humiliated, the preyed, the misused in Romania, the old ones and the young people.

A Mafia

Compared to other instutions and to the whole society a mafia is the most flexible, the most adaptable and the most pragmatic one. It knows how to suppress people and puts fear into them. It works with dirty tricks and contempt of humans. It does not know a real ideology and makes agreements with the communists, even with high-ranking dignitaries in the Vatican. Have you ever heard about the secret society P2 and the cardinal Marcincus in Rome? It hides its face and works in the background. It stops at nothing. Thus it is in Agnita and all over the country. They get away with everything, they cover up for each other and stick together. But there is an experience. They will not be eternal. One of these days the arm of history will hit them, too.

I want to see the day when also the Romanian people go through their country with their heads held high, I want to see the day when the cashier in the grocery is happy about every small and big amount of money she may enter into the cash desk for her boss. I want to see the day when the waitress heartily laughs together with me and is happy that I have come to her restaurant again this week. I want to see the day when the post officer quickly opens her counter and cuts a caper, because I buy stamps for 12.000 letters. I want to see the day when the manager of SA Electric calls me and says: Father, we have a problem. You have not paid your electricity bill. Could you please come around, so that we may find a solution. I want to see the day when in Romania all communist slogans disappear from walls and houses, but especially from the heads and hearts of the people who scarcely know yet how horrible life is, if they are indoctrinated by any slogans. I want to see the day when detainees in Romanian prisons are not tortured anymore, but motivated to think about their lives and to change them and when they are treated like humans, so that they may become human again. I want to see the day when old people in Romania are able to arrange for dignity in their sunset years and not have to beg for a piece of bread anymore. I want to see the day when it is not necessary anymore to have homes for street children and when the young people in this country have a chance of a solid education and occupational expectations, so that not millions of them have to go abroad where they are again exploited as low-wage workers. And in my little gypsy parish I want to see the day when people come to the mass because of their longing for God and not because they could perhaps get some food or a piece of chocolate. I want to see the day when lie and theft and cheating are outlawed and when a promise is a promise and when I may rely on my fellow humans. I want to see the day when communists and neo-communists, oppressors of humans and mafiosi voluntarily give up and make way for the new generation. For God?s sake they should keep everything they have stolen, but they must give way for the democratic forces in this country, because they are here and they are only waiting for taking over responsibility. I want to see the day when ??..I love this country, but without stomachache.

Often I am asked in Agnita or in Iacobeni and other villages,

why I actually do not run for mayor?

You know what? As a matter of fact I would like to. What do you think about that?

And do you know what I would promise you, my future voters?

I would only promise you the truth, nothing but the truth. Because therewith we could already solve many problems in this country as well as in Agnita. I would promise you the virtues I once learned in Germany:

honesty, punctuality, reliability, incorruptibility and respect for humans.

Would you please stick by me.

See you next Friday. 

Your Father Don Demidoff ICCC, also known as Don Bosco. Basilica of Iacobeni.

House of Agnitex Long live the communist party!

Sometimes during all these turbulences of my everyday life I ask myself: Priest, where are you going to? Priest, don’t you choke on all these activities? Deadline after deadline? Priest, are you still able to take a breath? Priest, do you still know your name?

Then I stop and enjoy the moment. Then I remain in what I am doing just here and now. I have given up to wear a watch. As I want to live just in this moment. When I have a look into my timetable, I get really sick, then I feel driven from moment to moment. Then I think about what I will have to do in the next minute, the next hour, tomorrow. Then I feel driven. Then I am torn within myself.

I want to learn about the human

No, I want to enjoy the moment. I want to learn about the human just standing in front of me, who needs me, who says yes to me, who has been looking for me. Or I want to learn about that human, whom I need, whom I expect help from, who gives a chance to me to remain in this moment. The human whom I may give peace and the one who gives peace to me. Thus I am able to enjoy my time in spite of a crazy timetable. Even if I work much, I do not feel torn then, I do not feel driven. As I do one after the other, everything quite intensively. I immerse myself in what I am doing just at the moment. I do not yet think about the next minute or the next hour. I am now. Well and truly.

In Sibiu an old woman inquiringly looks at me, she turns around to me and in this moment I ask myself, what is she just thinking? A baby in a buggy is standing in front of a shop and I put my head in while swinging it, and the child smiles at me as if asking, who are you? I step into a shop and ask the sales lady with the sad eyes: Are you sad? No, no, she answers and suddenly smiles, only serious, only serious. Totally unknown children greet me in the street and make the sign of the cross and I remain amazed, as in Germany you do not know that. There is a young woman passing me in a skirt a bit too short, slightly shaking her head while looking over my cassock, and asking herself how an old man may walk about dressed like that? A man, reader of my column in this newspaper, says to me: I know you, all these things you write are quite courageous. A young man with colored hair asks me: Are you Catholic? How is it to be Catholic?

Are you Catholic?

These are the moments when I pause, happy, peaceful, not thinking about the next thing. But then the mobile phone annoys me, when tearing me out of my inner peace, sort of pushing itself forward, forcing me to the next situation, which I do not yet want to think about at all, because I want to remain in this minute, because I do not want to be driven. Because in every moment and in every encounter is a miracle and this miracle I want to feel, experience, enjoy, savor.

My timetable is subject to a rhythm. Time has its rhythm. The day has a morning, a noon, an evening and a night. The month has weeks and days and also the year has its structure. An hour is full of minutes and seconds. I want to live and experience every single second. Not the next one but this one. If I worked against this  Contact: dondemidoff@web.de

rhythm I would soon be the looser and first of all not be myself. And every human has its own inner biological rhythm. It is good to obey one’s inner rhythm and to remain in every minute in order to ask yourself: Am I still, am I now? Where I am?

If I remain and live according to the biological rhythm of my self, of my body I am consistent with myself. Then the thought of being torn or driven will not appear at all.

Then I live well, very well, and I will succeed in everything. And I am able to cope with my timetable and my workload, step by step, minute for minute. Everything is done easily. I am not my own slave. And thus I feel the presence of God, always, as God knows free humans only. 

They pray mechanically and moan and suffer

Too many people are the slaves of their time and of their own lives, they do not know any inner freedom and they wonder that they do not find their ways to God. They pray mechanically, make undefinable gestures at any church and any cross, which probably mean to be ambiguous signs of the cross. They are lost in moaning and suffering all the time and there is so much dryness, grief and loneliness in their souls and a continuing moaning for better times. They live in an inner poverty and look for wealth, where they cannot find it. They look for adventure in the next event, the next hour, the next year. And they incessantly ask the ones who know better why they are doing so badly. They remain on the surface and are not able to immerse in the moment of this minute. And they do not know, that God does not live on the surface but that the LORD is in another dimension and that His world has a totally different rhythm.

After each period of darkness there will be a light day. Every encounter holds a piece of divine light. We just have to catch it. Now. At once.

See you next Friday, my faithful readers. If you now lay aside the newspaper, please let your thoughts rest a little while with my words. Look out of the window or wherever you are at the moment. Look at the people who are just passing you. Can you see how many are looking at you, too? I wish you happy minutes, moments. I wish you   t h i s   moment. 

Your Father Don Demidoff ICCC, also known as Don Bosco. Basilica of Iacobeni.

In these days many a Christ is surprised again and again. While in Germany people greet each other with the words “Happy Easter”, here at any place and any occasion everybody says “Christos a inviat”. “Yes”, is the answer, “he has risen”.

Every time I am bewildered by this greeting and during my 16-year-life here in Romania I have not yet got used to it. I know people here and in my country, who consider Christian life, particularly church life, to be something totally insubstantial, totally unreal. And in their everyday life they do not heed at least one of God’s Commandments. They lie and they steal, they are unfaithful and they lay hand on their children and they force them to begging and they get drunk every day. But they say: “Christos a inviat”. It makes me shiver, when some people greet me this way.

Or does it only express the longing for life, the longing for the true, the eternal life? We do not believe in it, but we wish to make it come true by a phrase from the Christian Codex?!

That’s it exactly. There are too many phrases, empty phrases. Word creations. As said before, it makes me shiver, when people just parrot these phrases. If they just – in the name of heaven – thought anew about these phrases, pronounced them consciously, pronounced them inquiringly. If we anew tried to live, to give spirit to our words, we would be able to understand the art of living. The one who contemplates and thinks about the words he is speaking, this one would first become silent and then would restart to shape words and sentences, and then he would surprisedly look at his vis-à-vis and ask: “Do you really believe in that?” I can tell you that you may get a surprise if you ask somebody, who says “Christos a inviat” “Do you believe in that?” Put the rule to the test and you will experience strange things. But most of the people just would turn away from you, as it is not allowed to ask such a question, is it?

Do you really believe in that?

First we have to recollect to life, then we may also think about eternal life, the life with Jesus Christ. We have to learn the delight in life again. We have to learn again that life is togetherness with other humans, the life with our fellow humans. If we experience and train a healthy rhythm of life, of our lives and the lives of our fellow humans, we may think about the meaning of resurrection. And then we have to answer questions, basic questions?

How can I organize, lead my life? Do I live in the adequate surroundings? Am I accompanied by the right fellow humans? Do I have a choice? Who am I really? Where do I come from? Where do I go to? Do I have order and discipline in my life? Do I live on material basis only or am I interested in spirituality, too? Am I interested in the community of humans? May I be able to put aside my selfishness? May I be able to take courage to spread the word of Jesus Christ? Or even to suit the action to the word? Do I know the inner way and do I allow myself room for it?

A school of the heart

We should build a school of the heart. Yes, that would be a great deed in this country, where hearts and heads are still broken and where they become more and more. How empty we are, without any orientation. And how sick does all that make us. If we anew trained and educated our hearts, we would get well soon. If we had more respect for our fellow humans and did not principally take the right of way in the street, if we trained anew the rhythm of community and charity, we could master the art of a healthy life. And this rhythm needs order, order of time and work, order of togetherness.

Again and again there are people who obstruct my passage, when I am just walking out of a door. They bully their way. I have never been so aware of this as in Romania. Or have you ever seen that in the bus young people make room for the elderly ones? How many people – even the supposedly educated – cut you off or do not give you the chance of an answer. And how many shake hands with you while looking somewhere else. And moreover the lies …!  How may this society revive, when lies rule everything. The lies of the leaders and the lies of the common people. And the lie is the sister of thievery and thievery is the brother of corruption.

Let us build a school of the heart, so that we may live healthily again in the long run. So that our words and wishes will be substantial and also or even the phrase “Christos a inviat”. Then I really love to answer with all my heart: “Yes, it is really true. Christ has risen in truth. Share his happiness. Yes, be happy with your life.“

Pater Don Demidoff ICCC

www.depeschedondemidoff.com

Priester der Independent Catholic Church USA

Member im Council of Community Church USA

www.icccusa.com

Präsident der Stiftung Sf. Don Bosco für verlassene Kinder

Präsident der Liga für moralische Wiedergeburt Basilika zu Iacobeni / JakobsdorfRumänien

Contact: dondemidoff@web.de

Oh holy arrogance

A jeep stops in front of our foundation for street children. You cannot ignore the letters DGASPC. It looks martially, a bit like a sort of command.

Are we to be scared now?

Three young women get out of the car, no actually they could still be pupils of a high-school. But they also could be any barbies. They approach me and instead of saying hello one of them insinuatingly says: Here are two children. I refuse to tolerate this kind of confrontation and conversation in the middle of the street. I answer: here are thirty children, how about first learning something about civilization. Now they pretend not to realize what I mean, respectively not to understand my pronunciation as a foreigner. You never tell the truth fair in the face of antiquated people or those who have still to learn it.

I ask them to come in, offer them a coffee and request their legitimation. There names are Felicia L., Alexandra M. and Cristina B. They call themselves psychologists and social assistents. They do not have a legitimation, but the paper of a "delegation".

We start a conversation, as far as you may call it a conversation. I cannot see any skills of a psychologist or a social assistant or is it because in my 16 years in Romania I have not yet learned that not qualification is important but nepotism and ideology.

Why am I not really able to learn that?

I have the children Danut (15) and Adina (13) called in, the children which we - according to the phantasy of the three DGASPC-ladies - "had obviously stolen". The mayor of Iacobeni had entrusted them in the care of our foundation, which was the only reasonable solution, after they had been thrown out of their home. 16 years ago, when nobody knew our task, it was more often that we were suspected of stealing children, even selling them or at least their organs. But now, 16 years after the "revolution", after having won more than 80 lawsuits on libel and offense and after having taken out an execution against the health minister and the minister of the Interior for a compensation of pain and suffering of a billion Lei, the new generation does not yet know the new spirit, which should have arisen here immediately after the "revolution". If Ion Iliescu and his followers, his "elite in succession", did not prevent it till this day, by continuously hiding e. g. the truth of more than 75.000 documents of the Securitate and preventing them to be published.

Pater Don Demidoff ICCC

www.depeschedondemidoff.com

Priester der Independent Catholic Church USA

Member im Council of Community Church USA

www.icccusa.com

Präsident der Stiftung Sf. Don Bosco für verlassene Kinder

Präsident der Liga für moralische Wiedergeburt Basilika zu Iacobeni / JakobsdorfRumänien

Contact: dondemidoff@web.de

Sunday Word

02-09-2007

Frank Abbas, streetworker in the ghettoes of Varna in Bulgaria asks me to come to him. An hour from Bucharest there is the border village Giurgiu. The border reminds of the old fortifications between the former countries. Now it is Europe, but nevertheless you have to to drive peculiar detours to reach the Bulgarian border. Collection of 6 Euros for use of the bridge - they accept Euros only. I have a 10-Euro-bill only, they keep the rest. Bulgarian border: German? You may pass. Then a kind of highway which you will not yet find anywhere in Romania. 180 kilometers until Varna, straight, ecellently constructed and neat. I am amazed and I begin to draw a comparison to the country, where I have been living for 16 years now. I become enthusiastic and I am blindfolded: here everything must have improved in the meantime.

Arrival at the bathing resort Varna. All hotels are booked up, in the middle of winter. I am surprised. It is spoken German in the hotels, good German. I am surprised. The town seems to be neat, cleaned up. If there were not the cyrillic letters, you could easily believe to be in a Western European town. Finally, a taxi driver knows a hotel at the harbor. Would you please drive ahead. I am tired, dog-tired. The wind gale-forcely blows from the harbor. So violently, that I am hardly able to open the door of the hotel.

They still take your passport

In the harbor, in a safe harbor, I think. Everybody is friendly, but they take your passport, if you do not pay immediately. That I knew from Romania only in the first 10 years.

I ask Frank Abbas to come to the hotel, we want to have our meal together. To exchange our ideas and information. Frank is German, he worked with an international truckage company in Bulgaria and some day, as he says, "was fed up with corruption and disrespect for human dignity". God lets a Roma child run into him, wretched, wounded. He recognizes the sign of heaven and enters the scene, the scene of the gypsies or as they are called there, the "Millets".

He says "I am hungry, I have not eaten anything today". And "may I order another salad, I am really hungry". It occurs to me, as if I have known Frank for a decade, but that happens, when brothers in God meet. We pray together, thankful, that God has brought us together. The waiter stands at the table and does not understand, what we are doing.

Now Frank has been there for two years and he had to bear many mental and physical pains. The police does not love him. How to love somebody who shows solidarity with "those people". The word police makes him nervous, even the ones, who only control the traffic. "Drive slowly", he says over and over again, "we do not want to catch somebody's eye". I begin to think about it. I myself had been arrested only once and should have shot shortly after the "revolution". They planned to loose me in the woods of XX and then to claim that I wanted to flee, in order to shoot me dead. Thus I am able to judge Frank Abbas' feelings.

The town of Varna: people are living in the middle of the trash

The next morning Frank shows me the town. The sunny side first. In the truest sense of the word. A whiff of freedom and happiness? One mansion more imaginative than the next. With an undisturbed sea view. Magnificent buildings in any color and pattern. Am I in Hollywood or Nice? The new Europe. If the people living there, are happy? Alas, I wish it for them with all my heart. But what about the others, who do not live on the sunny side? Frank shows me the other extreme.

We drive to a trash-dump. What are we doing here? Soon I can see the truth. People, children are living in the middle of the trash. They do not have even a solid dwelling, just lath frames with plastic bags and rags. In the middle of winter. In the middle of the new Europe. They are looking for something eatable in the trash, they contract bacterias and virusses. A little boy sticks his head out of the stinking trash, screams blue murder and is standing in front of my car. I am paralyzed. I have never had fear of contact with street children in Romania. Here I am not able to step out. I am shaken to the core. How lucky are my children after 16 years education in the "Casa Don Bosco"!! Wild running pigs dig into the trash just like the people. They eat the same. The same virusses, the same bacterias. When they are butchered, people will eat the bacterias of the bacterias. Please let us go. Have I become more vulnerable while growing old. I have never seen that in Romania. I have seen much pitiable poverty, still today. But that? In the new Europe?

The water is contaminated already

We drive on and have another look back at the huge trash-dump from out of harm's way. I pray, Lord, have mercy upon these tormented, but also have mercy upon those, who tolerate this and do not change anything. It is said, they will come with tanks and "clean up". The water is contaminated already. Lord, have mercy upon those, who torment people and claim to establish a humane Europe.

We are driving to Vlasislavovov. There are the ghettoes of the gypsies. The huts and crates are hanging on a mountainside, too. But not on the sunny side. The police avoids the ghetto and the people do not leave it. The dwellings stick to each other, so that you think, they are kept grounded only by that. Frank asks me to remove my cassock. Popes have bad experiences there, the gypsies do not want to deal with them. Frank is a Baptist and they call him "Dobre Pastor" (a good shepherd). But I never have denied my cassock owing to opportunism. I keep it. The "Dobre Pastor" has a room there, rather a dungeon. The children come and start a fire. A small camping table is the altar. Above handmade, childish crosses. This is true belief, here they believe from the ground of their hearts. Here the prayers are unvarnished. Here the cries for help are true. On the wall hang papers written with cyrillic letters. They learn from the Bible. Soon I am the "Papa Catolic" (Catholic father). I see their longing for a bit of dignity. I lay my hands on one after the other and imploringly ask God for ransom. What credits do I have, that I am so well. They say, he has "painted" the cross on our foreheads, "toj dobre" (good man), he has touched us in spite of virusses, and Frank says "You tiptoed into their hearts". "No, Frank, I did not do anything, but everything is mercy. And they said "he prays correctly".

Come back again, they said in the end

Come back again, they said in the end. "Yes, I will come back", I promised them, "and in summer we will celebrate the Holy Eucharist in the middle of the ghetto. I will bring you the Host ... That will be a feast ... And I will be happy to be among you."

I am driven back to Romania and it occurs to me that it is a never-ending way. I am lost in thoughts about these innocent and tormented children. Who asked these children, if they wanted to be born as gypsies, who asked them, if they want to live in a ghetto? What do these people think of Europe, what has changed for them? How good, that they do not leave their ghetto and may see the magnificent waterfront buildings, the mansions of Hollywood and Nice in Bulgaria.

Back home again I told my children, how these children in Varna have to suffer and how lucky they are to be here. Yes, Frank and all of you, we will pray for you, with you.

"What do you think will happen, when the prayers of gypsy children will join", Frank had asked me at last. Then God will cut the ties and blow the ghettos up, I answered. And my children sang: God has made us like this. You are white and I am black, my Lord, my God.

If you want to help Frank Abbas and the trash and ghetto children of Varna:

bulgarien.de.tl

or directly to me: dondemidoff@web.de

Yours Father Don Demidoff ICCC

Basilica Catholica Ecumenica in Iacobeni besides Agnita

International Council of Community Churches USA

Sunday 11.00 AM Holy Mass

Sunday Word

Good Morning, I am back in your newspaper.

Now my engagement for the new newspaper has been delayed and I am glad to be present in "ZIARUL de Sibiu" every Friday again. Some of my readers did actually miss me. I admit that it does me good, when you speak to me in the street and tell me that you welcome my clear words. So please continue to address me and speak your mind. It is time to learn not to be afraid of the truth. Many have congratulated me on my courage and I promise you that also in future I will not be considerate of wrong interests. And I am also glad that "Ziarul de Sibiu" wants to have articles from me again.

So, I am back and I am writing my first column for you in this new year 2007. And as a priest I promise you nothing but the truth and always the truth.

Injuries of childhood

On January 1, the Catholic church celebrates the Holy mother Mary. Mary is the protectress of life. Just in the beginning of a year she urges us to accept the new days and months with a special attention, to attend and plan them carefully, and that we ourselves, our family is a zone, where motherliness and mildness may prosper.

Who among us does not carry injuries of his own childhood with him. How many have remained a hurt child, have not understood father, mother or brothers and sisters until today. And my children, the abandoned romanian children, have such a longing for their parents, who do not care for them and not even visit them. These injuries of childhood, these injuries of lonesomeness my children will carry with them all their life long.

Show limits

Therefore I want to urge you as father and mother to care for your children as for precious goods, to particularly protect the childhood of your children, which are entrusted to your care from heaven, to really love your children and to give them a Christian and a well based education. Love for your children does not mean sweet softness and unlimited permission. Love is: to prepare children for life, to show limits within security. Only if your children know limits, they will be thankful to you one day to be able to independently stand their life. A child who has never learned limits will enter the adult life with illusions and egoism and will fail. And the child will accuse you, the parents, of having in fact programmed injuries in the future by your permanent easing. Do you have to accuse your parents of something like that? The prisoners I am caring for in Codlea does miss real education, they have never learned limits.

Mary continuously refers to her son Jesus. And Jesus Christ is the real educator, the redeemer, beyond all churches, beyond all sects, beyond all wrong promises and all temptations.

Body, soul and mind are the pillars, which your child should experience during its education. With my, the abandoned children I try to realize the communication, and thus some of the street children have developed to wonderful independent persons, who could even free themselves from their trauma of being abandoned by their parents. Others fail because their parents have sinned against them in different ways.

Trust the star of Bethlehem

At the horizon of the heart do you also see the star of Bethlehem? And you? Do you trust this star? Do you follow it together with your children? The star of Bethlehem is the star of longing. The star of the Holy child. At the beginning of this year, of which more than a month has already passed now, irrevocably gone, we need an orientation again. The star of Bethlehem is the one and only orientation. When we are no more able to cope with our lifes, our children, when the new year has already brought so many disappointments and disasters, when we fall in speechlessness, then let us look for the star of our longings: the Holy child.

If your children are still at home, if you still have father or mother, then please be careful with them in this new year. Now you have still time, to tell them, the precious words you have wanted to tell them already long ago: words of love. Take your time for your parents and for your children. The sentence "I do not have time ..." does not count. One month of the new year has already gone and how many needless things have we already done. Have you had a real dialogue with your family members, with your children, with your own father or mother during the last month? Let us treat the persons entrusted to our care more attentively, gently, indulgently and forgivingly. Do we really know if our parents or even our children will outlive this new year? On the occasion of the funeral of family members I often see hysterically emotional releases just here in Romania. Why? In the end they were not able to say words of love any more.

Would you please think about that and maybe you will live more consciously in this year 2007.

No guarantees for the new year

The new year does not give us any guarantee for safety and security. Alone the egoism of the youth is breathtaking. They only think about highlife, fashion, disco, drugs, sex, freedom and denial of any responsibility. The massive ecological changes which we all watch with so much indifference, the economic abuse in the so-called global world, the greed for resources of the big capitalists and their permanent relocation of commerce and industry to the low-cost production countries, the maniacal disregard of human dignity, the daily killing of innumerable people in barbaric wars, where will we stand at the end of 2007? Can we still build our house of life in this world?

The family is the fundament of the house of life. If today every second matrimony fails, if the people do not want live to within a matrimony any more, if more and more children are born without the security of a harbor, if our longings are not oriented on the star of Bethlehem but on wrong enjoyments and promises, then I am afraid of this new year 2007. But if we reclaim what really keeps us grounded, the family as a shelter of security and refuge, as a model for a sound plan of life, then I have no anxiety for our emotions, then we will discover the real earth of our being, then we will rediscover our next, our parents, our children.

We are not able to wipe off the fear of the new year. We may be exposed to terrorism, accidents, diseases and unemployment. There is no guarantee for a life without problems. But I can arrange for a safe harbor of my life, so that my parents, my children are beside me, with me, for me. That will relativize and reduce our fear. That will make it easier for us to face the truth, as I try to do it with this column every Friday.

God is the anchor of your harbor. For 2007 I wish you love, sympathy, safety, security, warmth and familiarness in the harbor of your beloved family.

Then everything is going to be alright. Stay with me until next Friday.

Yours Father

Pater Don Demidoff

Basilica Catholica Ecumenica in Iacobeni beside Agnita

International Council of Community Churches USA

Sunday 11.00 AM Holy Mass

Sunday Word

A bang and we are Europe

No, no, not a bang but a fireworks in the “European capital of culture Sibiu”.

Half a million Euro were paid for the super fireworks which ordered from a French company on the turn of the year came down on the heads of the Romanians in Sibiu, former Hermannstadt.

They have never seen something like that … they have really never seen something like that. But the Romanians have not yet seen many things. While the Romanian towns are filled with the aid money of the European Union and it is stressedly looked for potentialities to hastily spend Euros, in the rural districts the people are still starving. And in Germany people live on Hartz IV (unemployment benefits).

In the country they have never seen a water closet yet, but it does not matter, now that we have a fireworks from above. 80 % of the people use an outhouse and the crap seeps away there at the best or is piped into the ditch.

In the cities they have installed traffic lights with clock timers. You can keep ready your foot on the throttle. The villages do not have paved streets and in winter you sink into the mud.

In the western styled restaurants you now find water closets with sensors. That is very important here. Showers and water closets with sensors while so many people are starving and the sensors in their stomachs are alarming in vain.

During the holidays I handed out bread and margarine to my gypsy community. They are hungry. And when during the church service a baby with a donkey and two sheep were brought to the altar 400 gypsies were delirious with joy. In their eyes I saw tears and a light, that hundredfold exceeds the worth of a fireworks. In this service in the one and only ecumenical church in Jakobeni (60 kms from Sibiu) I learned to pray in a new way again.

The Romanians hope to achieve a great latitude. Latitude by money. After the fireworks these dreams will vanish into thin air. Some rich will become more rich, many poor will become poorer. It has already been announced that 75 % of the untertakings will have to be closed, because they do not comply with the terms of the European Commission. What will the farmer do who has two cows and two sheep? Is he allowed to keep them? But they are his living …

Thank you, all our friends in Europe, who do not have their view obstructed, our benefactors who – as all the years before – helped us over hard times once again. Our children in the home for street children were allowed to stay, because the people expressed solidarity with them and were not taken in by dazzling messages. I even could take in again children who had to leave us before. I hanged out a white sheet, saying: come here, our brothers and sisters in the West care for us.

I could bring at least a small Christmas light to the high-security prison in Codlea – in the new Europe thousand prisoners are held like pigs, 30 in one cell – by sending a bill to each of the prisoners of one cell, collected from our supporters in Western Europe.

When you visit the “European capital of culture Sibiu”, please leave the hype of the day behind you and come to Jakobeni to the “Basilica of Silence” and the “House of Angels”. Here you will develope a new kind of sensors: for the melancholic Romanian landscape, for the untouched nature and for the characteristics of the people in the countryside.

How good that not everything is paved and covered with concrete here, how good that I am not watched by sensors in the bathroom, how good that I am allowed to live a bit aside of Europe. How good!

Sunday Word

Published  romanian daily newspaper "Ziarul de Sibiu",  monday  dec. 11^th 2006

Never ending persecution of the

“Priest of Thorns” in Romania

Now Father Don Demidoff ICCC is also persecuted by the National Commission for the struggle against racism. Father Don Demidoff is member of the ICCC, the International Council of Community Churches in the USA. In his weekly column in the Romanian newspaper “Ziarul de Sibiu” he had made critical comments on the Islam in four articles and after his lecture in Regensburg (Germany) demanded the Pope not to knuckle down. Thousands of Muslims announced their intention to demonstrate against the Pope’s visit in Turkey.

Father Don Demidoff resigned from the Roman-Catholic Church 30 years ago and is member of the Independant Catholic Church, which itself is member of the American Council.

The headings of the articles about the Islam were “Why is the Pope supposed to knuckle down?”, “Fear of the Islam”, “Hard to believe”. In the article mentioned Father Demidoff had offered asylum to the French philosopher Redeker, who had been threatened on his life by the Muslims.

 www.ziaruldesibiu.ro   www.depeschedondemidoff.com.        Heading „Sunday Word“

Father Don Demidoff has been cited before the commission for December 7, 2006.

 Address: Consiliul National pentru Combaterea Discriminarii

Autoritate de stat autonoma              Str. Valter Maracineanu 1 – 3        Bucharest

December 7, 2006 at 10.00 a.m.

Publication: Don Demidoff, Der Dornenpriester, ISBN 973-0-03816-3

For 16 years Father Demidoff has been in Romania now. Due to his dedication to the street children he had been permanently persecuted and tormented. In more than 80 cases his lawyer had won and even had taken out an execution against the secretaries of the Interior and of Health, who both had been sentenced to large compensation for pain and suffering, because they were not prepared to accept the decision of the Highest Court in Romania.

dondemidoff@web.de

My comment:

I am very astonished that the National Commission reads the columns of a priest in the province. Or shall we better say the truth and ask who presented the mentioned article to them. That they acted in bad faith is obvious because only one article is to be debated. The context only arises from reading of all four articles, which I have one after the other publicated in this newspaper. First of all I will presume that the commission has the objectivity to read all four columns.

I declare that I did not discriminate anybody or anything, but only did mention facts based on the Koran. Of course I have my own opinion. Or are we in Romania again so far that we must be afraid to speak out one’s own opinion. Everybody is free to study the Koran.

And everybody is free, whether Christ or Muslim or atheist to get granular on the statements of the new testament of the Bible or the Koran and to compare them. Jesus Christ brought the message of love, Mohammed the one of the sword. And there are thousands of proofs. Here only one example: the adulteress. Mohammed of the Hadith tradition says: “Stone her”. Jesus in the Bible says: “The one who is without sin may throw the first stone.”

Where and how do I discriminate anybody? The same commission has decided that the orthodox icons have to be eliminated from the schools. Do we live in a country of christian tradition or do we have to subject to those who benefit from our tolerance and whose worship is guaranteed as well?

Of course all these things do not happen accidently. In Germany there were legal disputes, whereupon the crosses had to be disposed of the schools. Or do we have forgotten that many hundred years ago the Muslims attacked Romania in order to burn all the Christian churches? Aren’t there the Saxon Historic Churches which remind us still today? It was an honour to me to restore one of these churches in Jacobeni and so to preserve it for the following generations. But maybe in a little while I will not be allowed to pray in my own church any more. Maybe in a little while our Christian churches will be the stumbling block and instead of our civilization the Shari’a will be legal: stoning of adulteresses or amputation of the hands of thieves. And all romanian women have to be veiled. The strategies of the islamic fundamentalists are clear and decided. In the overdimensioned mosques, in their extensions built for the future, these strategies can be seen clearly. And there will be a time that the bells of the Christian churches will have to fall silent, because any potentates will condemn them as discrimination and instead of we will be treated with the suras of the Koran from the minarets. Poor, ignorant and cowardly Europe. You will be executed by your own wrong tolerance. Is that the Europe we are building for our youth, for the next generation? Europe is theirs. Do they want to organize their lives under the veil?

I repeat what I confessed before in another column. I want to have the peaceful Muslim as my neighbor. I want to share his live, I want to be at his side, I want to be invited to his barbecue and I want that we respect each other – our different clothing and our different lifestyle. And I demand the acceptance of the laws of the country we are living in together. And of these Muslims there are actually many all over Europe. But woe, if they are radicalized or fundamentalized, if they are made fanatics! Especially young Muslims are susceptible to that.

According to law in Germany no animal may be killed by “slaughter according to Islamic rites". Now a German court has conceded the Muslims that they do not have to follow this law and may kill their animals as they want to. Will there be different laws for different religions in Europe soon? What an outlook? But the crosses and icons have to disappear already now.

In my church in Jakobeni I join the different confessions of the Christs to a unity. Every Christ there finds a symbol of his believe to the point of the jewish believe, the religion of Jesus Christ. Come on Muslim brother, let us pray together in the Basilica of Jacobeni: You pray to Allah and I pray to Jesus Christ, the son of the triune god. And you may bring your prayer-rug as well as you will tolerate my Christian symbols.

I will report about the outcome of the “Consiliul National pentru Combaterea Discriminarii” in Bucharest regarding the case of the Catholic Priest Don Demidoff. I am afraid that I will have to write more often concerning this issue or what do you think?

DepescheDonDemidoff to the Romanian

Newspaper "Ziarul de Sibiu",

Sunday word Ziarul de Sibiu November 3, 2006

FEAR OF MOSLEMS

Part 2 - Western Europe shudders terrified

If there is really true that Prophet Mohamed ordered to his disciples to impose religion by means of sword, why should we wonder anymore and minimize facts?

The Pakistan  Parliament unanimously voted a resolution by which Pope Benedict’s statements hurt Moslems’ feelings and create a gap among  religions. In India the Pope was labelled to be blasphemous. The Moslem culture has  an aggressive attitude towards the Western part of the world, this is obvious according to these attitudes, still, the Western part shudders with fear and remains silent.

They are aggressive among themselves. Shunits  versus  Shiism versus Alevits versus moderates versus non-moderates.  

Western Europe shudders terrified

The Westerns would hardly hope for a chance if moderates Moslems could impose themselves versus their violent fellow members, if Moslem women could gain their rights, if Moslems from Europe could accept basic rights and the feelings of the Christian religions and confessions from their hosting states. The film director Martinelli emphasizes: "he ho does not do this should not be tolerated here ".

Filaret Bulekov, counsellor of the European Council, active at the Moscow Patriarchate considered the violent reactions of the Moslem groups to be “inadequate” and asked for balanced reactions. Enter a sincere dialogue, was he asking the Moslems, if you want to be understood by Christians and Europeans.

Have you already forgot about  September 11, 2001 when a self would be–assassin entered the  World Trade Center Building of New York? Have we already forgotten about London and Madrid? Like in the past, when  communism made a profit, now the Islam makes a profit  out of the Westerns’ generosity, out of our candour, tolerance and liberty. For the Islam everything is a sign of decadence. What is going to happen to us after our becoming aware?

One can say that also Christianity has made devastating mistakes (see the Sunday’s Sermon from "Ziarul de Sibiu", October 10, 2006 page 5). Still the difference remains immense. No mistake of the Church resides onto the roots of the  Gospel. Jesus was not violent. On the contrary, he preached for giving up violence. An answer for the Islam’s causing fear is only one: let’s especially reflect into Christian Churches and redeem these to Jesus. Why could we not succeed by ecumenism? Because also in Christian Churches the desire of power and peoples’ domination is so obvious that not real dimension is still available for Jesus.

There is no further place for Jesus

What would the Patriarch of Bucharest, the Evangelic Bishop of Sibiu or the Catholic priest of Sibiu say if  Jesus the Jew, in person, naked and starved knocked at their door? I think they would say nothing, they would only close the door saying "wrong address“. In Romania there is treated with tension and tomb silence the fact that in Iacobeni there was really dedicated the first real  ecumenical Church in the very spirit of Jesus: „Let us be one“. This was the basic peace message. The international visitors of the Church have expressed their surprise into the Guests’ Book of our Church and if Jesus would knock at our door, in Iacobeni bells will toll. 

The calls of Mohamed makes hatred deeper. The call of Jesus makes love flourish. Mohamed appears in the Koran like a military commander  without mercy, like a devastator who massacred  Jews and preached for  plural marriage. The suffering of  Israel’s people, up to nowadays versus the  Hezbollah is more than evident.

The weakness of the Western part of Europe is shown by the reaction of the French minister of education, Gilles de Robien in connection with the hunted philosopher. Show yourself cautious and moderate, wrote he to the brave teacher of a French gymnasium. I myself was so irritated about this that I spontaneously invited Redeker together with his family and offered him asylum .

Redeker was writing in "Figaro", that his personal situation is a disastrous one. "I do not know where I am going to be tomorrow’’. Up to the present time no French leader has openly condemned the threatening by death addressed by the French Islam to  Redeker.

Poor France, poor Europe

Poor France, poor Europe, we all would become one  Redeker if we could dare to express our opinion. We all will be threatened by Scharia law and holy war, we the hypocrites. No, we do not want to threaten. As we love our Moslem brothers and Moslem sisters. We do want to love them. But we cannot do this if they kill us.

Still, maybe everything will change into another way. Due to the disastrous  decay of birthrate, especially in  Germany, we will pave the way for the Islam without any resistance. One single value have Moslems preserved at the real height and that is the value of the family, that has collapsed in our culture.  One highly-positioned Moslem asserted „we will be the savers of those in need, we soon will feed old, childless Germans and Europeans. Germany and Europe will become Moslem states. 

Still, good night !

Still, without violence, without sword and without bloody repression? By creeping in secret? Large and strong enough mosques have been erected here.  If these are God’s prognoses, the more pleasant is this situation for me than war and crime. So that, you, Europeans, conceive children or sell your countries to the Moslems rich in children. Still, good night.

Please, remain favourable to me until next Friday. I hope to be able to conclude the subject of  Islam. Or?

Your Father, Don Demidoff ICCC

DepescheDonDemidoff to the Romanian

Newspaper "Ziarul de Sibiu",

Sunday word Ziarul de Sibiu October 27, 2006

Part I. Threatened by death

After the Sundays Sermon of last Friday Why should the Pope accept  him be intimidated I want to be today more clear. The critics that were  brought to this article have not impressed me at all.

"The Islamic world should use its potential to cut the hands of its enemies" original quote of the Iranian president, Mahmud Ahmdimedschad, who referred to the Koran. If we do not want to mutually provoke ourselves in Europe it means that we have lost our voices. Is it correct to keep silent? We accept to be intimidated and the opera "Idomeneo" is cancelled in Berlin, before its first night, only because of the fear of Moslems?

And how many steps have been made in Europe for supporting the Koran: they are building the largest mosques and have guaranteed the teaching of Islamic religion in schools. How many Christian churches have we been entitled to be build up in Islamic states where we can teach the religious Christian education? The German domestic affairs minister, Wolfgang Schäuble convoked an Islamic conference in order to make new concessions. Maybe so we have encouraged the Moslems to become more aggressive. When are we going to definitively throw away Christianity? In the Koran there is the anathema, at Christians there is the prayer for the bless of God, this is the basic difference between Islam and  Christianity.  One Moslem still said: my brother, in your Bible they say, when you are slapped, turn also the other cheek. Oh, brother, but you have only two cheeks, what can you offer more? Can you be more clear when it goes  about the disregard of our religion?

Threatened by killing

The atheist Jacques Wirion said that the Islam can not accept a counterpart voice. In Europe shall we keep silent because of fear? He still said: "Islam does not permit liberty. He who tired that was convicted".

The caricaturists of a Danish and of a German newspaper were threatened by dead.

The French philosopher Robert Redeker has to steadily change his domicile because the Islam sentenced him to death by pronouncing Fatwa. With his wife and three children, they are refugees from one house to another. Redeker wrote: the Islam tried to force its own rules in Europe: in public baths, separate hours for women, interdicting caricaturing the religion, asking for a special menus for Moslem pupils at school cafeterias, blame against those who are atheists. Also against the writer Salman Rushsdi, at proper time, the Fatwa of death was pronounced. Years after years he was protected by huge expenses by the British government. The Dutch film director Theo van Gogh was shot on an Amsterdam street because he dared to make a movie that was a critical expression versus the Islam. Also the German critic of the Islam, Hans-Peter Raddatz feels no longer secure.  Each Moslem  hobby killer  has a free permit into our world to kill.  Shall we send a written application to the Islam, a begging letter? Please,.... what can we ask the Moslems for? To be able to express once a year the  own opinion of a free spirit in a free country?  Do we have any escape for it? Robert Redeker is the offspring of a family that was taking refuge during the Third Reich in France, in order to get rid of the Nazis.  And France now only half-measures awards him protection. On the same day when he was sentenced to death, the French minister of domestic affairs visited a mosque out of fellow feeling. In the Internet we can express our sympathy for the philosopher. But,...  when do we stop barbarians by signing?

The Islam tends to spiritually dominate the world. It shapes the Moslems minds by compulsory daily rites and weekly lectures. So these people are manipulated and indoctrinated like during the Third Reich in Germany, like in the recent history of Romania, up to the altering  of the own human being.  This means: religious fanaticism instead of education, glorifying oppression, closing and isolating the country, covering up the women.

What kind of God is This?

Not only Christians, from my side also atheists can ask: What kind of God is This who cannot resist a blasphemy as the Islam perceives it? How small is this God if he lets Himself be offended by a caricature?

How small are people who show on the TV the decapitation of another fellow man? How small are we, the Western people if we can are looking helplessly outside and do not scream? We do not throw with stones into embassy buildings although there are people of nations injuring other people’s rights.  The extreme Islamic people are in fact afraid of any dialogue, they protect themselves with a robe so that no one can reach their unrealistic primitive ideologies. 

If we secretly ask each Moslem about liking this religion and the related regime, if we ask young women about their real desire to cover their faces, for sure we will get a total different answer. In Rabat, Morocco, lovers hide themselves under the wharf’s wall to cuddle and kiss. The Islam curse them to burn in hell. In Cairo, Egypt, young couples gather into a walled up street. It is the street of love, "Shari al-Hubb", where children are conceived in secret. Such secret places are all over in order to live together with the contradictions of the modern of the Islam.  Simple women tell there about love and sex and there is so shocking what they say, that maybe these facts are to be kept hidden. Starting with the circumcision of the women’s labia and up to rapes. A girl of ten tells how she was raped by an imam. He pressed her into a wardrobe and raped her. Guilty are only women and their problems. Is this the Holy Koran? Most of the Islamic representatives are confirming that also in Europe the  Islam cannot be practised but in its traditional form.  What really expects us? Subjugating European values and structures means "Saving mankind through the Islam". Good night.

War against you and against me

This is the truth, this are the real targets. This is the war of Moslems versus the Western world. We close our eyes and stuff four ears as if there were no danger. And we are humble and obedient in front of ideas and practises that disregard human beings. The war of the political Islam is a war versus the entire civilized mankind, it is a war against you and against me. Still, please remain favourable to me until next Friday. We will be continuing with the fear of Moslems in the second part.

Your Father, Don Demidoff ICCC

DepescheDonDemidoff to the Romanian

Newspaper "Ziarul de Sibiu",

Sunday word Ziarul de Sibiu October 20, 2006

Why should the Pope be intimidated? 

The Pope and the  Koran: this title was given by our news agency beginning with February  13, 2006 at  9.15 A.M.  in open PR and on www.depeschedondemidoff.com. Pater Flavio Fession from the University Ave-Maria of Florida told that  Pope Benedict 16-th had declared during an internal discussion at his summer residence that the Islam cannot be reformed. I wanted this stay so, without spinning out my talk.  

But, who is  Pater Flavio Fession, who is Pater Don Demidoff, that someone reads their writings or become nervous upon their assertions? Like us, in Castelgandolfo, the Pope  declared that the  Islam s not a peaceful religion. Only in Regensburg, at t6he University’s  Auditorium, there where he felt to be home, there he probably considered to addresses himself to an private and restricted audience. He only expressed his opinion.

The threatening is again  dramatic. At last, Moslems can argue with  the Pope. What he did was focusing upon common sense of faith and upon a peaceful dialogue.  The Head of the Church did one, he spoke the truth. There is of no help for anybody to make out an already existing conflict a taboo.

The truth cannot be hidden.

Now he s threatened, although the  Islam might not be  violent. And so, why should the  Pope leave himself be  intimidated?

Let’s hope the Christian Churches will learn out of this. The Crusader Knights of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition and the witches burnt at the stake, the payment of indulgences and so on and so forth are show a lot. Why does the Islam not learn out of these? In what century s it still stick? We have no right to ask about this. Islam s the religion of subjugated the woman, predicates the critical prominence of the Islam, Hirsi Ali. Two third out of the global violence starts from  Moslems, into the name of the  Islam.  This truth cannot be hidden. And should the Pope leave himself be intimidated?

How do we get rid out of the mutual suspicion circle? We have had overcome nationalism and fascism and do hope overcome the communist as well as Ceasescu’s and Stalin’s  ideologies that were looking down the human being. We have paid down with lots of substance as not even liberty is free, on zero fee. The Pope should be advised to keep a cold sensibility in his relation to the Islam. And not to accept to be intimidated. Our Western and let’s hope still Christian world has lots of heartening things to offer to the Islam: humanity, deaconry,  charity, as well as technology, education, economy, culture.

But not intimidation.

So, we only want to encourage Benedict to tell us what he really wants to tell. What he already said at his summer residence. He has already declared his true religious convictions in public. There are lots of blockheads who do not dare to say what they think, lots of theologians and so called princes of peace and many so called neo-liberals.

If we have no right to tell the truth about the Islam, it means that this has terribly subjugated all of us of the Western world. Everything has started by intimidation and everything will start from intimidation. The Pope is to become silent by intimidation, we all will have to keep silent. 

I am a Christian because I have understood the mission of Jesus Christ. Because I have interiorized as God wants us all to be free and independent people. Because he loves us and demonstrated us how to love him. Because he loves us so much and endless as we should love.  Because he endlessly loves us even then when he sets us free due to the fact that we have decided to be against him. I cannot imagine another overwhelming freedom than that of a Christian. I can put this liberty into practise quite in the relation with my own Christian church. No one can intimidate me. Not even the limited articles of an alcoholic addict scribbler from the daily newspaper of Sibiu, "Tribuna". This scribbler was excluded from the party still in the communist era: because of immorality.

As I have understood the message of my religion, I want to brotherly embrace the Moslem who is my neighbour wherever he will be, express him the lack of violence of our religion. In fact, I do not want to speak to him, I want to show these to him, to tell him: we want to respect each other, not to intimidate each other, we want to share our concerns and joys. Where there is mutual respect there are no threatens.  

While in the Palestinian town Gaza an explosive load destroyed a Christian church and in another part of the world a Catholic nun was cowardly shot dead, the Moslem radical Egyptian brotherhood was asking the Pope to apologize for “adding fuel to the fire”. "Wake up, Moslems", they said.  “Get up, Holy Father and give up the dislocations between fade statements and hilarious apologies.  You apologize for being threatened? How would have Jesus Christ acted? He preferred to be crucified on the cross than wailing in front of the Court.

No, Holy Father, do not add fuel to the fire, but neither do wail or let yourself be intimidated. Jesus Christ does not want something like that. And you are representing Him on earth, are you not?

Your Father, Don Demidoff ICCC

DepescheDonDemidoff to the Romanian

Newspaper "Ziarul de Sibiu",

Sunday word Ziarul de Sibiu June 14th 2006

In Europe we will all be strangers

Romanians can’t wait. Finally, finally we’ll be in Europe. But will we be really?

Starting the 1^st of January 2007 the skies will open and manna, silver and gold will fall upon us. Is this how it is? No way, there will be nothing of the kind. Do we need Europe? In reality, it’s Europe that needs us most: the underground resources of Romania, the slave-like salaries, the country as protection area against the Russian lion and the wonderful, unspoiled Romanian nature.

Do Brussels really know what Romania looks like? Every day top level delegations come to our country, including in Sibiu. They move between the most exclusive hotels, get from one reception to another and do not leave the asphalted streets. They eat and drink only from the finest hands and kiss the smoothest and most nicely manicured hands. And the Romanian spectators say: Oh, this is Europe!

Do people in Brussels, Paris, Berlin and London really know what things look like in Romania? Do they really want to know? Have they ever been to a village at the end of the world, where there are no asphalted streets, but only a dusty road? Have they ever kissed, or even shaken, the dirty, shoddy, crooked hand of a Romany or have they ever ‘scratched’ on their cooker hob the so-called ”dough” (flour with water baked directly on the hob), have the great ladies and the great gentlemen stayed at least for one night in an average-level Romanian hospital? Do they know that most villages do not have drinking water or water treatment plants? That many Romany people can’t go to school, for lack of clothes? That the village priest denies them blessing, for instance christening, as they can’t pay the due ”fee”? That priests in Romania are paid by the State? Of course. Have the European bureaucrats and capitalist aristocrats spent at least one hour in a Romany hut ("pigsty"), with clay-made floor or with four persons in a dirty bed, near a stinky hob and with windows having not enough glass? Do they know how fast people grow old round here, with no healthcare and no hygiene? Do they have any idea of why men and women of 30 here look like those in Germany of 60?

They will come here with their factories and exploit even more the Romanian ”slaves”. Prices will go up even more and salaries will be pinned down where they are today. Oh, and what fierce consequences there will be if the Romanians dare to claim decent salaries. Factories will be closed down, as they were brutally closed down in Germany and in other places in Western Europe and they will move on, to another people of slaves ready to be exploited. And they will brutally violate the indigenous nature and cover all in concrete for the tourist industry, and no far from Sibiu, thousands of US soldiers will turn the village of Cincu into one big whorehouse. Good night, Romania.

The former German federal president, Roman Herzog, called the enlargement of the European Union "a scandal and idle talk”. This vocal president was admonished and considered as a person slandering his homeland. This will also happen to me actually. But no one will ban my blunt ”Sunday sermon”, not even when, under false and ridiculous accusations, I had to appear before the Prosecution in Sibiu, as was the case this week. Could it be so foolishly that they want to get rid of criticism?

Germany took decades to free itself mentally from dictatorship and practice democracy. Romania needs to learn and put everything into practice in just a couple of years. Do they really not know what happened here to the children in the foster homes that, following the European promise, have been discharged under the so-called reintegration law? In reality, they ended up again on the streets.

Europe required that corruption should be put a stop here. These false apostles … The Eastern, Balkan corruption has long crossed into Western Europe and instead of it being eliminated here, this virus is playing havoc there. Yes, the Italians are world champions in football now. But in their own country (sic) in Europe, the results of football games have been manipulated. Oh, holy hypocrisy… It was learned from the Romanians and Bulgarians and the corruption drug is highly welcomed. When will the favoritism and family economy stop here? Never. And the many false experts’ opinions that are bought…. And the avalanche of sickly laws... And the incredible bureaucracy nipping any initiative in the bud... And the good grades of students they bought from their teachers and so on … and so on … And the incapable and below-average people landing themselves high level jobs, considered as persons with normal education. How will all this be welcome in the European countries?

Oh, but I forgot, nothing matters. Romania will become Europe. So that the world dictatorship of the capital and the sickly globalization can have here as well their slaves. So that the few rich can become richer and the many poor, including the Romany, even poorer.

All of us, you and I, will be in Europe strangers in our own country.

Think about my words, remain faithful to me. And raise your voice, so maybe you could make it right. No, not everything will be right. Unfortunately. I wish I could have sung a different song. God help us.

Your Father, Don Demidoff ICCC

DepescheDonDemidoff to the Romanian

Newspaper "Ziarul de Sibiu",

Sunday word Ziarul de Sibiu June 7th 2006

God is dead, the atheist told me. I told him: That's strange, I have just talked to Him. Yesterday's relics, the communists and the atheists, still exist in great numbers in Romania, this most wonderful and still so morally destroyed country. They still spread their poison, they haven't learned anything yet, they do not want to accept the new Restaureted church of Iacobeni Romania reality. They live by the former patterns, by the former doctrines, by the former hatred and eternal contempt towards people and God. But they are still here and too many of them occupy important positions. I am currently experiencing all this myself. I am harassed and humiliated and even the judiciary police pursues me for having restored the church, a historical monument of the 14th century, and for having brought it back to life, not as a historical building but as a house of God, as a temple of our God. We naturally have to take into account tradition, a historical monument must obviously be presented like that nowadays in order for us to see both the history and the present. We are only human, believers of this century. We are respectful We respect the heritage of our ancestors, but we live today and our ancestors do not ask us to give up progress and modern technique. And neither does God. I do not want to get into details and tell you what hilarious things I am being reproached. Yes, the arguments go as far as statements of the kind: "We should have left the church deteriorate completely..." Those that say this betray themselves as being former comrades bound by the same principles, who do not care to help people but wait for the right time to thwart their plans, to stop their ascent. In God's eyes they are nobodies, they are lost and corrupted. And their doctrine is perverted. "Tribuna" newspaper (formerly a newspaper of the communist party) dared even to announce on its first page "Don Bosco mutilated the Church". They are the ones They are the ones that are invariably ignorant and say that God is dead. They become horrified when the church fills up with life again. You have no idea that Don Bosco is a saint who dedicated his life to the poor and to the abandoned children, who built many churches and who now lives in Heaven. How could he mutilate a church? Are the journalists of "Tribuna" illiterate? No, they either cannot or do not want to make a correct journalistic research, according to the ethics of their profession. They ignore the fact that on Sundays hundreds of believers come to the divine service from the Ecumenical church of Iacobeni. Or maybe this is something that bothers them terribly. They ignore the congratulations and praises of hundreds of international tourists who write messages worthy of being highlighted in the guest book. Yes, you can cry out all you want, you poor spirits. It is not God who is dead, but your communist words and intrigues. We are all acquainted with the human typology that does not live in reality. These people have withdrawn into their fantasy and have built an imaginary world where there is no God, a world similar to the one they accepted without checking it, and mistake this imaginary world for reality. They transform doubts into facts, their suspicions are certitude and they want to turn all their untempting dreams into reality. God is dead They say "God is dead". They mistake their lack of belief for the reality and live in an imaginary world. The situation is similar to the one from the psychiatry hospitals: patients consider themselves normal and think that the doctors and the nurses are the insane ones. Oh, how I pity you, you former Reds. How many of you are there still in the editorial offices of newspapers? You have caused so much affliction and you continue to scream: "Don Bosco mutilated the church". When will you give up? When will you finally make room for new people, especially young people? Anyway: any true Christian will welcome you with his arms wide open, will be glad to tell you Christ's message and will invite you to see that God is truly alive and that talking to Him and following His word is an accomplishment. When will you finally understand that the old church of Iacobeni is first of all a house of God, where one can pray and talk to God, and that our ancestors join us in this prayer out of the ancient walls. But that's strange, I said, I have just talked to God! Oh, yes the communist obviously does not have God's phone number. But I would have gladly given it to him. I wish you a great weekend, full of peace and a refreshing Sunday service. Everything will be all right. Remain loyal to me. Yours truly Pater Don Demidoff ICCC Priest of the Independent Ecumenical Cathiolic Church of Iacobeni *International Council of Community Churches USA Father of the Homeless Children of Cincu

www.depeschedondemidoff.com

dondemidoff@web. de

The Ecumenical Divine Service for everybody Sunday at 11 o'clock The Divine Service for Children Sunday 2 p.m. in the Church of Iacobeni, 13 km from Agnita.