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Valerian Trifa

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File:Valerian Trifa.jpg
Archbishop Valerian Trifa

Valerian Trifa (monastic name of Viorel D. Trifa; June 28, 1914 - January 28 1987) was a Romanian Orthodox cleric and politician, the archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America and Canada. For part of his life, he was a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Biography

Born in Câmpeni, Transylvania (in Austria-Hungary at the time), he was the son of schoolteacher Dionisie Trifa. He studied at the school of his native village, then at the Horia Gymnasium of Câmpeni and the Gheorghe Lazăr High School of Sibiu, from which he graduated in 1931. Between 1931 and 1935, he studied theology in Chişinău, graduating cum laude. He then studied philosophy at the University of Bucharest and, in 1939, history and journalism at the University of Berlin.

While a student, Trifa was part of the fascist Iron Guard (Legionnaire Movement), and a contributor to Libertatea newspaper of Orăştie; in 1940, during the National Legionary State (the period when the Iron Guard was in power), he was elected president of the National Union of Romanian Christian Students.[1]

Although hostile to the Guard's new leader, Horia Sima,[1] he became involved in the January 1941 confrontation between Sima's Legionnaires and Ion Antonescu. As this conflict turned into a failed rebellion (see Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom), he fled to Nazi Germany, where he was interned in the camps of Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Dachau. After Trifa was freed, he was briefly the secretary of Metropolitan bishop Visarion Puiu in Vienna and then Paris, and, following the end of World War II, he was a was professor of ancient history and French language in Italy, at a Roman Catholic college.

He moved to the United States on July 17, 1950, using the Displaced Persons Immigration Law and was a writer at the Solia Romanian language newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. At the Congress of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America held in Chicago on July 2, 1951, Trifa was chosen bishop and then moved to Grass Lake, Michigan, where the headquarters of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate is located. In 1970, he became an archbishop, as his church wanted to affirm its autonomy from the Orthodox Church in Romania, which was subordinated to the Romanian Communist Party.[2] In 1955, he gave the opening prayer before the United States Senate and he became a member of the governing board of the National Council of Churches.[3]

In October 1976, a group of members of the Concerned Jewish Youth organization took over the headquarters of the National Council of Churches building, as a protest against the refusal of the organization to oust Trifa.[4]

In 1975, the United States Department of Justice started its case against Trifa, the core of its argument being that he entered the United States under false pretenses, hiding his Iron Guard membership. One of his speeches had a role in the start of the Bucharest Legionnaire riots in 1941, during which more than a hundred people (mostly Jews, but also ethnic Romanians) were killed. Trifa originally denied this, but he admitted after being confronted with evidence (sent by the Romanian communist government),[5] including a photo of him in an Iron Guard uniform and texts of his pro-Nazi speeches and articles. However, he claimed he was not ashamed of his past, as he had no alternatives and he did what he thought was best for the Romanian people.[3]

The Israeli prosecutor Gideon Hausner asked for the extradition of Valerian Trifa so that Israel could try Trifa for crimes against humanity, but the Israeli government never made any official extradition claim.

At the time, Trifa's early convictions caused another scandal. In May 1979, upon instructions from Noel Bernard, Radio Free Europe's Romanian contributor Liviu Floda interviewed Trifa on his Church's activities; Bernard's initiative was allegedly questioned by Floda and his employers alike.[2] News of the interview's broadcast caused virulent reactions inside the United States, and resulted in a hearing by a subcommittee of the United States House Committee on International Relations.[6]

In 1980, Trifa gave up his American citizenship and in 1982, he left the United States in order to avoid deportation,[6] after being accused of inciting attacks on Jews in Bucharest during World War II. After spending two years searching for a country to give him refuge, he settled in Estoril, Portugal, and died there of a heart attack only three years later, at the age of 72.[3]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Ornea, p.329
  2. ^ a b Puddington, p.251
  3. ^ a b c "Valerian Trifa, An Archbishop With A Fascist Past, Dies At 72", in The New York Times, January 29, 1987
  4. ^ "Jews Occupy Building and Urge Ouster of Prelate", in The New York Times, p.12, October 15, 1976
  5. ^ "Rumania Gives U.S. Data in Case Against Bishop Called Ex-Fascist", The New York Times, June 24, 1979, p.12
  6. ^ a b Puddington, p.252

References

  • Gerald J. Bobango, Bishop Valerian Trifa and His Time, 1981
  • Traian Lascu, Valerian, 1951-1984, 1984
  • Z. Ornea, Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească, Ed. Fundaţiei Culturale Române, Bucharest, 1995
  • Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2003
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