Romfilatelia introduces into circulation on Wednesday, January 29th this year, the anniversary issue Cardinal Iuliu Hossu Year, which also marks 140 years since the birth of the herald of the Great Union at the Great Assembly in Alba Iulia on December 1st, 1918. The issue consists of a postage stamp, a perforated souvenir sheet and a First Day Cover.
The postage stamp (with the face value of LEI 8) reproduces a portrait of Bishop Iuliu Hossu, while the perforated souvenir sheet features, on its postage stamp image (with the face value of LEI 30), a portrait of him in episcopal attire, from 1921, alongside a suggestive graphic of the steeple of the Minorite Church (Transfiguration Cathedral) in Cluj-Napoca.
The First Day Cover reproduces a documentary photography with the members of the Union Delegation (1918), which included Bishops Miron Cristea and Iuliu Hossu, alongside Caius Brediceanu, Alexandru Vaida-Voievod, and Vasile Goldiș. An image of the overall architecture of the Transfiguration Cathedral (Minorite Church, Cluj-Napoca) completes the design of the cover.
Born on January 30th, 1885, in the village of Milaș, Cluj County, Iuliu Hossu attended the confessional elementary school in his home village and later the Roman Catholic High-School in Târgu Mureș.
Sent to Rome, at the Urban College „De Propaganda Fide”, he obtained two degrees: a Ph.D. in Philosophy (1906) and a Ph.D. in Theology (1910). He was later ordained as a priest by Bishop Vasile Hossu of Gherla.
In 1917, Emperor Charles I of Austria appointed him bishop to the vacant seat of the Greek-Catholic Diocese of Gherla. The appointment was confirmed by Pope Benedict XV on April 17th, 1917.
After the end of World War I, Iuliu Hossu was present among the founders of Greater Romania, being the one who, on behalf of the Great National Assembly of Romania, presented the Proclamation of the Union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania on December 1st, 1918, in front of the Great Assembly in Alba Iulia. Together with Bishop Miron Cristea and two prominent Transylvanians, Alexandru Vaida-Voievod and Vasile Goldiș, he handed over the Declaration of Union to King Ferdinand I in Bucharest.
After the establishment of the communist regime, as Bishop of the Cluj-Gherla Diocese – Senator by law of the first Parliament of Greater Romania and honorary member of the Romanian Academy (1945) –, Iuliu Hossu will come under the sights of the communist-atheist dictatorship. He will reject the proposal made by Prime Minister Petru Groza to accept the seat of the Orthodox Metropolitan of Moldova and will be punished for his attitude towards freedom and for the rights of the Greek Catholic Church, with its abolition (1948). He will be imprisoned – between 1950 and 1955 he was imprisoned in the Sighet penitentiary – and later he will be placed under house arrest, in conditions similar to those of a detention, at the monasteries of Curtea de Argeș and Căldăruşani, where he will remain until the end of his life.
The harsh, inhuman conditions at Sighet, along with hunger and cold, severely affected the bishop’s health. The drastic isolation conditions imposed at Căldărușani Monastery and the lack of medical assistance led to his death on May 28th, 1970, after a brief hospitalization at Colentina Hospital. He was buried at Bellu Catholic Cemetery.
A year before his death, Pope Paul VI appointed him cardinal in pectore, because Iuliu Hossu had asked the Pope not to leave his flock, to continue his work for the Church in Romania, even if the dictatorship, in order to get rid of him, would have been allowed him to go to the Vatican.
Iuliu Hossu remains in the consciousness of Romanians as the herald of the Great Union and a well-known fighter for the rights of Romanians in Transylvania, which was under Austro-Hungarian rule.
As a recognition of his suffering for faith in Christ and in the Church, of the steps taken in favour of freedom under the communist regime, in 2019, on March 19th, Pope Francis beatified him in the group of the 7 Romanian Greek-Catholic bishop-martyrs: Valeriu Traian Frențiu, Vasile Aftenie, Ioan Suciu, Tit Liviu Chinezu, Ioan Bălan, Alexandru Rusu, Iuliu Hossu.
Romfilatelia thanks the Greek-Catholic Diocese “Saint Basil the Great” of Bucharest, the Greek-Catholic Diocese of Cluj-Gherla and Mr. Emanuel Cosmovici, researcher at the Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS), for the documentary support provided in the development of this postage stamps issue.
