The Constitution of Romania provides for freedom of religion by stating (in Title II, Chapter 2, Article 29, Section 1): "Freedom of thought, opinion, and religious beliefs may not be restricted in any form whatsoever. No one may be compelled to embrace an opinion or religion contrary to his own convictions." In the 2002 census, 86.8% of the population declared they were members of the Romanian Orthodox Church. In the same year, the Romanian government gave $2,750,000 to the Romanian Orthodox Church (in addition to the untold amounts collected from parishoners) and approved construction permits for 128 new places of worship. And they draw the biggest crowds on Paşte (Easter). Who runs the show?

Pimp Daddy Toader Arapaşu. Y'all bettah recognize! He's got more bling bling than Snoop Dogg and Nicolae Guţa combined. He be straight reprezentin' that eastside communism. Word is bond, playa. Toady, as his friends call him, was born a poor black child in a village somewhat near the Ukrainian and Moldova borders. As the tenth of 11 children, he was attention starved and irritable for most of his formative years. At the ripe age of 13, he shipped off to a hermitage where may have gotten his first taste of pedophilia. In 1945, at the age of 30, he graduated from university and got himself a paying gig as night shift lead for a church in Iaşi. The next year he was promoted to assistant manager in Iaşi and started going to university again. During this period, he got a little uppity with his superiors and let his true colors show when be started opening his big yap in support of communism. Was it philosophy? No, ol' Toady was merely a scumsucking opportunist who saw the writing on the wall. The Russians were already in control of Romania and he could see that wasn't going to change, so why not sell out the nation and start saying nice things about Central Committee? True dat, dawg.

So, the church leadership laid the smack down on Toady for licking the boots of the Soviet puppetmasters and justifying the murder of Romanians. They busted his rank back down to night shift lead and Toady was all kinds of pissed of about that. He found some other red-star gangbangers and joined their little posse being run by pro-communist Justinian Marina. They openly attacked the leadership of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the press, grabbing headlines and getting themselves noticed by the Soviets. It paid off big time, too. Within a year, the communist party was firmly in control of Romania and the Orthodox Church got an extra large enema. Thousands of priests opposed to communism were imprisoned in labor camps, shipped off to Siberia, or just plain shot. The commies immediately replaced them with the pro-communist shills that had anticipated this political maneuver all along.

Dats right, homies. Our boy Toady was tapped by the communist dictators in 1948 to rise up from rags to riches when Justinian Marina was named the new Patriarch by the new communist government. And just like that, Justinian rewards his communist ally Toady by making him an assistant bishop. Straight up! See, now, that's what I'm talkin' about y'all. If you wanna be a baller, you gotsta learn the fly moves from the bruthas that done come before you. This is how you get power, baby. WWJD? Selling out the nation and start preachin' slavery. Sho u right, sho u right. During this time, the new leaders like Justinian Marina and Toader Arapasu persuaded the communist government to dismantle its biggest rival - the Greek Catholic Church. Seeking to consolidate their control over the people via religion, the communist government approved the Romanian Orthodox Church's absorption of the Greek Catholic Church by law and seized over 2,600 churches from the Greek Catholic Church. A couple years of show-and-prove, then Toady got promoted again. This time he was responsible for a theological university, so he could indoctrinate all the young christians as to why the communist dictators were good for the people and how christianly the murderous purges were. By 1962, he was promoted to Bishop of Arad. Now, in 1963, the Cuban Missle Crisis had just been defused, the Vietnam war was going on and Kennedy was about to be shot. The ruskies were looking for new ways to get loyal communist agitators into the United States to help organize people against freedom. They saw a good opportunity in Toady and the communists tried to ship off to America so he could become the leader of the Romanian Orthodox Church over there. They tried to make it look like a legit church leadership appointment and kept his espionage mission on the downlow, but those capitalist pigs in America didn't buy it. They already knew Toady was an opportunistic creep bent on global communist domination and rejected his visa application. Some years later, he rose to the ranks of Archibishop a short while before Comrade Marina kicked the bucket. That put Iustin Moisescu in charge of the Romanian Orthodox for about 9 years. After that? Yup, Ceauşescu decided to reward Toady for his effectiveness in helping the persecuting Romanians and ensconcing the dictatorship. In 1986, village idiot Toader Arapaşu was appointed by the secular communist government to be a religious leader called a Patriarch who wears fancy gold crowns and misleads the faithful masses into believing the communist oppression was actually a good thing. He got to have a lot of fun, too. Working closely with Ceausescu, the Patriarch got a first hand chance to help destroy many of the churches of Romania, while cheerfully punishing any priest who spoke out in favor of preserving the buildings. In Bucureşti, twenty six wonderful historical buildings with interesting architecture were blown to bits as a result of this willing cooperation. Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Weeeeeeeeeeeee, how fun!

Sadly, it all came to a tragic end in 1989 when revolution broke out. Knowing the angry mobs of Romanians would surely lynch him, he dropped everything, resigned from his government appointed position as Patriarch and fled to Sinaia to save his own hide. That's some mighty powerful guilt, y'all. Not that he suffered much. In Sinaia, he stayed at the church's castle where the King or Romania once lived and surrounded himself by a boatload of expensive jewels originally belonging to the Cantacuzino family. He stayed there hiding out until the smoke of 1989 cleared. Once he realized the revolution was a fake conducted by his buddies in Securitate, he was happy to find out the new dictator Iliescu wanted to keep some continuity for appearances sake. A little backroom bargaining went on and, in 1990, Toady the Patriarch was reappointed by the government again despite criticism of his homosexuality (the result of being manhandled by priests at the age of 13) as hypocritical for a leader of the Romanian Orthodox Church. But money and power count for more, so he kept on wearing the fancy dresses, Liberace jewelry, and funny hats.

How much do you figure that dress cost? Looks like Versace to me. Eight of the over 2,600 Greek Catholic Churches have been returned. Of the approximately 1,500 Hungarian churches appropriated, less than 100 have been returned. That's some nice jing jing for Toady and his post-communist communist friends in the Iliescu PSD mafia. The Patriarch's website still glorifies the "militant" efforts of Nicolae Balan and others working with the communists to force other churches to "reunify" with the Romanians Orthodox Church. Additionally, it openly laments the events of 1989 which allowed other churches to come back to Romania and decries the right of these churches to spread the word. You can truely see that Toady is a loyal communist even today. A small group of nuns have been protesting against Arapasu's past corroboration with Securitate during the communist times. In retaliation, the nuns have been beaten. And that, my American friends, is who was leading most of the Easter ceremonies here in Romania.

When you have freedom of religion, being informed is always nice. Paşte Fericit, Teoctist!