The Parliament of Europe housed yesterday morning a press conference titled "Historical Churches and Christian Values in Transylvania and Beyond". The participants were the following: Laszlo Tokes, Istvan Csury, currently a bishop of the Reformed Church in Piatra Craiului, Romania, Mathe Denes, main trustee of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania, Romania, Kovacs Gyula, a vice president of the Baptist community in Romania, Nicolae Anusca, a main councilor of the major Catholic Archbishopric in Romania. The five of them signed a "brotherly communique" to express protest and reach the European institution. According to the document, in Romania there are cases of discrimination in terms of the attitude of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which criticized the participation of Bishop Nicolae Corneanu to a communion service together with members of the Catholic Church and of the Greek-Catholic one as well. This is thought to be so serious and illustrative of the atmosphere in Romania that the Magyar-Romanian delegation sanctioned the attitude of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The document also expresses "sincere recognition and solidarity from the community of our minority Churches in Transylvania to His Holiness Bishop Nicolae Corneanu, harassed for his faith in God and Christian openness". The authors mention their "compassion" for the "Orthodox brothers" in Timisoara, who took action to stand by the Bishop. There is emphasized: "In the European Year of Dialogue between Cultures, we trust the unity due to Christ, expressed in by confessional variety." Given these, there is a question that mounts: Isn't the Romanian Orthodox Church too a "historical Church" in Transylvania, where it is registered as majority Church? The representative of the Romanian Orthodox Church asked this question in Brussels, but he got a stunning answer: "We are sorry. This is a mistake made by the secretariat. We wanted to talk only about the situation of minority Churches." Even so, we asked, why is there only Transylvania, since all the Churches represented in this press conference have got national representation in Romania? The answer was the same: "We are sorry. There has been a mistake. But when we talk about Transylvania, we actually think about all the churchgoers in Romania." Well, it may be. It is just that the journalists there have received no corrected invitation. If they ever take interest in the issue, they will understand that the above-mentioned people speak on behalf of the Christian values in Transylvania and beyond and that Laszlo Tokes speaks on behalf of the latter people. (...) After all, this was it about: a ceaseless, rough and well-grounded accusation against Romania and its authorities, given "the minimum progress made with the anti-discrimination policy in the field of religious cults." This is something very serious and, even more, it is coming together with the information that the entire group demanded the European Commission officially to include an analysis of the way the property return law works in Romania in the future report on the latter country.

Cristian UNTEANU, Brussels