ABSTRACT

LIFE ITINERARY OF A TRANSYLVANIAN REFORMED PRIEST DURING THE COMMUNIST REGIME. DÉNES G. FÜLÖP (1931–2005)

The life story of Dénes G. Fülöp, who worked as a reformed priest in the Mureș parishes of Ghinești, Trei Sate, Reghin and Târgu Mureș, is a classic example of the thorny path of the Transylvanian Hungarian minority in the 20th century. The former theology student from Cluj, who sympathized with the revolutionary events in Hungary in 1956, assumed the tasks of pastoral service in an exemplary manner in the circumstances of the time after the prison sentence. His activity provides a perspective on the daily life of the Transylvanian pastor both before 1989 and after the change of regime, and makes it understandable, in addition to community organization, the nature of preserving identity, cultural commitment and educational activity in front of the faithful.

The informative files kept about him in the Archives of the National Council for the Study of the Security Archives attest the additional burden associated with the service, as well as the variable intensity of political police surveillance on the priest suspected of “nationalist-irredentist” activities, which first sought to positively influence him through the network of informants, operative technique, wiretapping and correspondence control, and then from the second half of the eighties it became radicalized in the sense of isolation, discrediting and removal from the workplace of the objective pursued.

Keywords: Communist regime, Romanian Reformed Church, political police, minority destiny, pastoral activity.

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