We should not be deceived by countries like Romania - who practise a relatively liberal foreign policy - into believing that they deal similarly with domestic issues. Romania is probably the most repressive of all the Eastern European countries. President Ceausescu rules with a vice-like grip - with one in four of the population estimated to be in the state's employ as spies.
I went on to describe the methods of Ceausescu's 'Department of Cults' and his programme of demolition of churches: 'It is commonplace for churches to be demolished to make way for 'urban renewal' programmes. Despite the difficulty of access by Christians to the Bible, the government pulped 10,000 editions of the Bible in Hungarian into toilet paper.' I also highlighted the case of Father Georghe Calciu, a Romanian Orthodox priest who had been a brave voice of dissent. He had been kept in prison for most of twenty-one years; was down to six stone in weight; and his hands had been broken to prevent him from making the sign of the cross. On the day before I left Romania, one of Ceausescu's officials (Dr. Nicko Bujor, former chargĂŠ d'affaires in London), gave me the news that Father Calciu would be freed. With the Conservative MP, David Atkinson, I was subsequently pleased to be able to host a reception for Father Calciu and his wife at the House of Commons. I was even more pleased to see television film of him during Christmas 1989, standing in front of the Romanian Embassy in Washington, claiming it for the revolutionary Government which had overthrown the dictator. Three Romanian Christians have been particularly to the fore in their country's fight for freedom. The Orthodox priest Georghe Calciu; Doina Cornea, the brave Catholic lay woman; and the Lutheran, Pastor Laszlo Tokes - now Bishop Tokes bravely withstood the excesses of the evil Ceausescu regime. It was the kidnapping and arrest of Pastor Tokes at Timisoara which triggered off the events leading to Ceausescu's downfall and his reputation remained unsullied during the difficult post-revolutionary days although the continuing Communist regime has threatened and intimidated him. A profile of Doina Cornea, which appeared in The Catholic Herald on Friday, February 16th, 1990, described her as 'Transylvania's Joan of Arc'. Cornea had been forced to resign as a lecturer at Cluj University in 1983, accused of corrupting the young by introducing them to Western philosophy. She had written innumerable appeals to Ceausescu, pleading with him to put a stop to the destruction of the villages,18 analysing every aspect of national life, and even