The account of his assassination reads like the script of a B-grade horror film. On 27 October 1947 the Bishop was returning from Lavki, where he had consecrated a church. He was accompanied by two priests and two seminarians. On the road between Cereivitsi and Ivanovtsi, a lorry filled with soldiers and police drove into the buggy at high speed, with the obvious intention of knocking it over and passing off the Bishop’s death as an accident. The horses died instantly. The buggy was smashed to pieces. But Romzha and his companions survived the accident unscathed. Then the soldiers, armed with iron bars, attempted to finish the job: they kept hitting them until they appeared unconscious and were then left for dead. Some passersby later came to their rescue and took them in very serious condition to the Mukachevo hospital. The priests and seminarians were discharged after a while, but Bishop Romzha stayed in the ward since his injuries were more serious.As the days passed his condition improved. But the Basilian Sisters who were nursing him were suddenly dismissed and replaced with a “trusted” nurse of the regime. It was she who gave him the coup de grâce on 1 November 1947 by poisoning him with gas. He died saying: “O Jesus…”.
Our little Byzantine Catholic mission parish is named for Blessed Theodore Romzha, the martyred bishop of Mukachevo, Ukraine. Today marks the anniversary of the transfer of his remains from Budapest back to Ukraine. The telling of the tale is a powerful adventure and witness to living for God. The source of the quote above and the bones of Theodore’s story is retold here, but that’s just the beginning.
The REST of the story (a la Paul Harvey) is here:
The Ukranian Cathedral of the Holy Cross was returned to Greek Catholic use in 1991, from Russian Orthodox ownership for many years, after being awarded to them as a spoil from the invasion of the region by the Soviets. Even though Mukachevo had given them land on a high place on which to build their own cathedral, they were reluctant to return it to its rightful owners. As a parting shot, someone–it is not clear exactly whom it could have been–made sure to trash the church (except for the altars, icons, and icon screens) on their way out the doors, right down to pouring concrete into the air ducts. In the crypts below the main church, where the remains of 300 years of prelates, priests, and prominent laypeople were interred, the graves had been ransacked and the remains thrown together onto a heap of rubble.
But no one would be able to prove who had perpetrated the desecration, although there were only a couple of possible suspects: the NKVD, and the departing Orthodox. It would be obvious to suspect the Orthodox, who held not a shred of respect for the Greek Catholics of the area. But the more likely perpetrators were the NKVD, who had good reason to prevent an autopsy of the bishop’s remains, knowing that forensic evidence would reveal poison and wounds consistent with Bishop Romzha’s martyrdom.
Individuals who had been present at the funeral of Bishop Romzha testified to his burial in the red vestments of martyrdom, so the remains clad in the shreds of red vestments were examined, and the wounds matched those known to have been received by the bishop, but the remains were to stay in Budapest for the next fifty years while the politics of the region settled down.
At last, though, it was time to return the remains of Bishop Romzha to his see in Mukachevo, and a solemn procession carried his coffin across two frontiers, from Budapest, through Slovakia, and into Ukraine, to lie in honored state in a glass casket, clad in new red vestments.
This event is celebrated today, June 28, especially in Mukachevo, but also here in Alaska, where our parish is proud to be the first to be honored with his name.
(This information is taken from a fragment of an article written by Fr. Christopher Zugger, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, in Albuquerque, NM. All gratitude and credit goes to Father for his diligent research.)
Blessed Theodore Romzha
