Ipostaze ale preotului în comunitățile românești în timpul Marelui Război

In Transylvania, where the Romanians had been forbidden for centuries to create their own political and civil institutions, which could have safeguarded their interests and rights, the Church had become the representative national institution, while the clergy formed the country’s cultural and political elite, serving as the spokesmen of the Romanians’ desiderata. On the other hand, in the absence of an appropriate bureaucratic apparatus, the clergy had to assume many administrative tasks, often playing the role of civilian officials. The clergy fulfilled this administrative role also during World War I. In this capacity, priests became, against their will, agents of the official state propaganda. Because of this activity of mediating (disseminating) the so-called „patriotic” message of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, priests were often forced into positions that conflicted with their standing as representatives of the national projects. It should be noted that, above all, the priest’s fundamental role was that of a shepherd of the souls. This role increased in importance and responsibility in a rural world that was shaken up by the horrors of the war like never before, in a world of villages deprived of the presence of men, who stood for the main force of labour and protection. Another aspect that we wish to highlight is the functioning of the priest-teacher binomial. To avoid school instruction being affected by the absence of teachers, who had been recruited for the front, the hierarchical superiors (bishopsarchpriests) requested the priests to take over their teaching activities. All these overlapping of roles show once more the important status that the clergy continued to have among the Romanian communities in Transylvania, but also the delicate situation in which its members found themselves during these years, as they had to carefully navigate between the requirements and the suspicions of the authorities, on the one hand, and the most profound expectations of their conationals, on the other hand.