Table Of ContentUnder the Sign of the Cross
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Under the Sign
of the Cross
Th e People’s Salvation Cathedral
and the Church-Building Industry
in Postsocialist Romania
[ ]
• •
Giuseppe Tateo
berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2020 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2020 Giuseppe Tateo
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tateo, Giuseppe, author.
Title: Under the sign of the cross : the people’s salvation cathedral and the
church-building industry in postsocialist Romania / Giuseppe Tateo.
Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2020. | Series: Space and place;
volume 18 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2020016104 (print) | LCCN 2020016105 (ebook) | ISBN
9781789208580 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789208597 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Church and state—Romania. | Church architecture—Political
aspects—Romania. | Crosses—Political aspects—Romania. | Catedrala
Mâ ntuirii Neamului (Bucharest, Romania) | Romania—Politics and
government—1989–
Classifi cation: LCC BR1050.R6 T38 2020 (print) | LCC BR1050.R6 (ebook) |
DDC 281.9/49809051—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016104
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016105
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78920-858-0 hardback
ISBN: 978-1-7892-859-7 ebook
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Text x
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Part I. Th e Cathedral
Chapter 1. Th e Cathedral and the People around It 25
Chapter 2. Th e Actors 60
Chapter 3. Controversies and Predicaments 92
Chapter 4. Clergymen’s Authority and the Rise
of Anticlericalism 117
Part II. Churches, Crosses and a Mosque
Chapter 5. Why and How Orthodox Churches Multiply
in Bucharest and in Romania 143
Chapter 6. One Symbol, Many Meanings: Th e Political Life
of the Cross 170
Conclusion 209
Appendix 1. Houses of Worship in Romania, Updated to
31 December 2015 218
Appendix 2. New Orthodox Cathedrals in Romania,
1990–2019 220
References 223
Index 241
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 An offi cial document published by the Ministry for
Religious Aff airs and Public Instruction in 1898 reporting the
funding allotted (acordat) and successively revoked (anulat)
for the Bucharest Cathedral. 32
1.2 Th e construction site, autumn 2018. 38
1.3 Th e miniature model of the national cathedral. 39
1.4 Th e entrance of the chapel on the day of the Virgin Mary
procession. In the background the western side of the national
cathedral is visible. 48
1.5 Patriarch Daniel represented as off ering, with the help of
St Andrew, the cathedral to Jesus. Th e painting is from the
interior of the chapel. 49
1.6 Pilgrims venerating a copy of the icon of the Virgin Mary
Prodromiţa are anointed with the Holy Oil. Chapel of the
national cathedral, July 2016. 52
2.1 Th e iconostasis during the inauguration on 25 November
2018. 67
2.2 Vaults and cupolas illuminated by natural light,
November 2019. 68
2.3 Assembling the mosaic on the walls of the sanctuary. 71
4.1 Th e entrance of the Colectiv nightclub a few days after
the tragedy. 121
4.2 Writing on the window of a shop of Orthodox items i n
Bucharest. 122
6.1 Father Andrei censing the cross in University Square on
Ascension Day. 180
6.2 Th e cross-shaped bust of Corneliu Coposu in Revolution
Square. 182
Illustrations vii
6.3 Th e Rebirth Memorial (view from above). 183
6.4 Th e Rebirth Memorial. 184
6.5 Th e Cross of the Century in Charles de Gaulle Square
(currently displaced). 185
6.6 Mihai Balko’s ‘A MONUMENT’, temporarily installed on
Magheru Boulevard. 188
6.7 Th e faithful showing their icons during the Orthodoxy
Sunday, March 2016. 189
6.8 Orthodox priests during the Palm Sunday procession,
April 2016. 190
6.9 Sticking crosses into the land destined for the new mosque. 203
Maps
1.1 Map of Bucharest with the demolition carried out by the
Ceauşescu regime in the 1980s marked in black. 41
1.2 Map of Bucharest showing the location of the cathedral. 43
6.1 Crosses placed before 1989 in Bucharest. 175
6.2 Crosses in Bucharest, 1990–1999. 176
6.3 Map of crosses and cross-shaped monuments placed
in Bucharest by state authorities and non-governmental
organizations between 1990 and 2016. 177
Tables
2.1 Public fi nancing of the national cathedral, 2009–2018
(in millions of RON). 75
3.1 Money allocated by the ROC for charitable purposes in
Romanian Lei, 2009–2018. 108
5.1 Amount of money allocated from the State Budget for the
salaries of the cleric personnel of religious units and for the
construction and repair of houses of worship between 1990
and 2018 (in Romanian Lei). 147
Acknowledgements
T
his book draws on the ethnographic material I collected while at the
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany). Further
funding was granted by the New Europe College of Bucharest, within
the UEFISCDI Award Program, the Executive Unit for Financing Higher
Education and Innovation, National Council of Scientifi c Research. I am
grateful for this generous support.
I have spent about sixteen months on fi eldwork in Bucharest: one
year between September 2015 and September 2016 and a few months
of follow-up research in 2018 and 2019. Th e people that have helped
me there are many and I will probably fail to remember them all. I am
particularly grateful to Father Augustin, Father Pompiliu, Father Mihai,
Father Nicolae and Mother Atanasia, who welcomed me warmly and let
me join them in their daily activities. Th anks to Geo, who was interested
in my research from the beginning and expanded signifi cantly my web
of contacts. I am also indebted to Cătălin Raiu, who was my point of
reference at the State Secretariat for Religious Aff airs and was incredibly
patient and available, and Alex Nedea and Diana Oncioiu, who were de-
cisive in the data gathering process.
Th anks to Lucian Cîrlan for his helpful attitude and bright comments.
Th anks to Ioana and her lovely family. Th anks to Cristi, with whom I
spent so many hours talking and musing about life and all the guys of
Argentin: Alex, Gelu, Vicone, Domnu Chestor, Sergiu and Petru. Th anks
to Vic, Alex and Ioana, with whom I had some great times. Many thanks
to Marian, Alina, Adi; to Gabi for being a true friend and the best travel
buddy I could ever meet and to my good old friend Diana Sandu for
transcribing my interviews. Th anks to Eugen, Liviu and all the students
of ASCOR I met and thanks to all the participants of the AUR Sum-
mer Camp. I am also thankful to Mihai Balko, Andrei Dumitrescu, Irina
Stahl, Andrei Pandele, Nicolae Noica, Ştefan Guga, Bogdan Iancu and
Sorin Dumitrescu, who off ered me one of the richest and most intense
interviews I have ever had.
At the Max Planck Institute, I owe debts of gratitude to Christoph
Brumann, who patiently went through all my draft chapters and whose
advice did much to improve the text. Chris Hann was a stimulating critic
and always pushed me to aim high. I also thank Filippo Zerilli from the
Acknowledgements ix
University of Cagliari for his many precious remarks. Many thanks to
the members of the department of Resilience and Transformation in
Eurasia and to my colleagues of the IMPRS ANARCHIE. I am grateful
to Sajjad Safaei, who as well as always being supportive was also ready to
proofread the text anytime I asked him. I discovered in Anne Erita Berta
and Ola G. Berta two friends with whom I could share my passion for
anthropology and a source of inspiration in terms of ethnographic com-
mitment. Diana Vonnak has been a fantastic travel mate over the PhD
years. I have shared with her an offi ce, food, readings, thoughts, dreams,
plans, worries and countless drinks.
Lastly, I would like to thank my mother, my father and my brother,
who have constantly supported me and ensured that I have never felt
lonely.
Notes on the Text
T
he reader will fi nd the nouns ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ and the
adjectives ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ widely used throughout this man-
uscript. Th e two are not coterminous. In line with Katherine Verdery,
I prefer to speak of socialism and (post)socialist state – as ‘none of the
countries ruled by communist parties described themselves as “com-
munist”’ (Verdery 1993: 179). ‘Communism’ is then used either as an
emic term or to refer to the communist party and its ideologists and
supporters. Th e name of the new national cathedral – ‘Catedrala Mân-
tuirii Neamului’ – was rendered both as ‘People’s Salvation Cathedral’
and ‘Cathedral for the Salvation of the People’. Th e interviews with
Marian Papahagi, Radu Preda and Teodor Baconschi were conducted
in Italian. Th e interview with Remus Cernea was partially conducted in
English. Translations from Romanian are always mine, unless specifi ed
otherwise.
In this book, informants are generally anonymized. When people are
mentioned by name and surname either they are public fi gures or people
who agreed to give me an interview and to be cited in this script. When,
instead, I have only mentioned one name (i.e. Vasile, Father Sofronie,
etc.) or one surname (i.e. Mr Neagu), these are pseudonyms. In order
to better protect the identity of those who preferred to remain anony-
mous, I have used pseudonyms for their working places (i.e. the name of
churches) or slightly modifi ed some uninfl uential aspects in their biog-
raphies (i.e. their li ving area, their profession, etc.).
