Potigani, Hunedoara County, Romania, May 13, 2025
Photo: episcopiadevei.ro
A church at the site where St. Ilarion Felea was born and served for a time was reconsecrated in his honor over the weekend.
Last July, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church canonized 16 martyrs, confessors, and ascetics who labored under the communist persecutions of the 20th century, including the Hieromartyr Ilarion (commemorated on September 18).
Three Romanian hierarchs—His Grace Bishp Nestor of Deva, His Grace Bishop Siluan of Italy, and His Grace Gherontie of Hunedoara—celebrated the reconsecration service on Sunday at the renovated church in the village of Potingani, Hunedoara County, in Transylvania, where St. Ilarion was born in 1903, reports the Basilica News Agency.
Photo: episcopiadevei.ro
Following the consecration, the bishops celebrated the Sunday Divine Liturgy.
In his homily, Bp. Siluan referred to the healing of the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda, explaining that the more distant a man is from God, the greater his spiritual state inclines toward paralysis or powerlessness.
His Grace also spoke about the zeal and values that St. Ilarion sowed as parish priest of the communities in Valea Bradului and Potingani.
And Bp. Nestor, speaking about the suffering and loneliness of the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda, explained that the Man we need at all times is Christ the Lord, Whom we encounter in the Divine Liturgy where He offers Himself as nourishment through Holy Communion.
Parish rector Fr. Radu Sorca offered each hierarch an icon of the Hieromartyr Ilarion Felea.
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Photo: pravoslavie.ru St. Ilarion Felea (1903-1961) was a Romanian priest known as “the spiritual father of youth” in Arad. In 1938, he was appointed professor at the dogmatics and apologetics department of the Arad theological academy, where he taught until it was shut down in 1948. The communist regime sentenced him to 20 years in prison for “intense activity against the working class and the revolutionary movement.” The official reason was that he did not preach the so-called “fight for peace.” Initially held at Gherla prison, he was taken to Aiud, where he died in 1961. The cause of death was a rapidly progressing colon cancer left untreated; he was buried in a common grave for prisoners.
Read more about St. Ilarion in the articles, “The Life and Death of the Hieromartyr Ilarion Felea” and “When Fr. Ilarion Felea Died.”
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