INFORMATION BULLETIN

“Nothing has been left from Valerian; and whatever he did was bad.”

That’s the statement and the thinking of one of the new priests in our Episcopate which was uttered at the Vatra not too long ago. A more reasoned priest, an old-timer, hearing that statement, told him to “leave the Archbishop alone; he’s now resting in his eternal sleep,” as if the new priest had committed a sacrilege. It was a rather mild admonition compared to the absurdity of that statement.

It is ironic that such a statement was made on the grounds of the Vatra, the site of Archbishop Valerian’s greatest accomplishments. Obviously, that recently-arrived priest knows very little - if anything - about the history of our Episcopate, how an estate with dilapidated farm buildings was transformed by Bishop Valerian into an administrative center which is the envy of other Orthodox Churches, as well as into a center of religious education and a meeting and resting place for all Romanian Orthodox in America.

The St. Mary’s church and Pioneer Chapel, as well as the dormitories for the religious education courses and Camp Vatra, did not fall from heaven Father; they were judiciously planned and built by Bishop Valerian with the support of our faithful who believed in his leadership. In St. Mary’s cemetery at the Vatra, planned by Bishop Valerian, rest hundreds of our faithful from throughout the United States.

What about the thirteen new churches built under his guidance during his thirty-three years of archpastorate? His efforts to get our parishes to move out of run-down neighborhoods and into better suburban locations breathed new life into our parishes. He spared no effort traveling thousands of miles to share with local building committees the experience he gained from building at the Vatra and from other churches in our Episcopate. In this respect, he counseled and guided but never imposed his will. In the published anthology of his writings, pages 181-183, we can find his thinking on this subject in the article “The Construction of

Churches - How a Modern Church Should be Built.”

And what about the publication program Bishop Valerian initiated, the most extensive of any Orthodox Episcopate of our size or larger.

Holy Liturgies, prayer books, books for every liturgical service, all published for the benefit of our priests and the religious education of our faithful, not to mention literally thousands of articles, were written by Archbishop Valerian in the Solia and the Solia Calendar for the guidance and edification of our faithful.

And let’s not forget the Heritage Center, Father, as big as daylight on the grounds of the Vatra, which certainly you could not have missed, one of his last creations which we, his followers, honored with his name.

The significance of Archbishop Valerian’s Memorial Room at the

Heritage Center, soon to be înaţ*-rated and opened to the perl:: :> gaining importance in view of the above statement. That pries: wm§ z:’. be alone in his ignorance: he coald well be the proverbial tip of the iceberg, given that thousands of Orthodox have immigrated in the last 20 years from Romania, kept not only in the dark by the Romanian authorities of what was going on in the world. but imbued with a false propaganda by the communist authorities as is the case of this recently-arrived priest. All the achievements of Archbishop Valerian enumerated in this article still stand. And there will be many more displayed in the Memorial Room, including some which are no longer with us, as a testimony of un-equaled achievement to one of the greatest Church leaders of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

TRAIAN LASCU

(1996)