Greek Uniate Church Robbed

By a Staff Reporter After the Government-sponsored farce of reunion with the Greek Orthodox Church, the Catholics of the Greek Rite in Rumania have been deprived of all their property and their institutions declared dissolved.
But the Orthodox Church does not reap the spoils; all property is declared forfeit to the Communist state by the decree which was published in Bucharest on December 2.
Issued by the Supreme Presidium, the decree declared the Church had ceased to exist following its own decision " to return to the Rumanian Orthodox Church.
STATE PROPERTY The decree added that some of the Uniate Church property, including monasteries and other institutions, which now becomes state property, may be made over to the Rumanian Orthodox Church.
it will be recalled that the persecution of the Uniate Church in Rumania has been going on for two years. In March, 1947, 350 of the 450 Catholic priests of the Cireek rite were arrested to intimidate them. Most of them were subsequently released, Then the Bishops were ordered to hand over the schools. They refused.
At Cluj on October 1 last a Schismatic, Fr. Juga, and 37 hand picked caretaker priests for those not released in 1947 responded to the appeal of the Orthodox Patriarch and government pressure to return to Orthodoxy. It is this socalled " unanimous decision " of 38 priests on which the Communist Government is acting.
The fate of the Roman rite Church in Rumania was the subject of an exchange of notes in October and remains perilous.