Blessed Vasile Aftenie

Vasile Aftenie (14 June 1899 – 10 May 1950) was a Romanian Auxiliary bishop of the Greek-Catholic Church, titular Bishop of Ulpiana, martyr of the faith and Servant of God of the Catholic Church. He was beaten until his death in the communist regime's jails for refusing to abandon his Greek-Catholic faith and the United Romanian Church. Pope Francis personally presided over his beatification on 2 June 2019. Born in Lodroman village, Alba County, on 14 May 1899, from his parents Petru and Agafia, Aftenie began his primary studies in his native village and high school courses at Blaj. In 1917 he was drafted by the army and was in Galicia and Italy at the front. After the end of World War I in 1918, he began law school at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest, but then decided in 1919 to enroll at the Academy of Theology of Blaj, and was later sent to Rome at the Greek College of the Saint Athanasius. He took a doctorate in philosophy and theology in 1925 and then returned to Romania. On 1 January 1926, Aftenie was ordained priest by Metropolitan Vasile Suciu. One month after he became a lecturer at the Theological Academy in Blaj. Soon afterward, Aftenie was named professor at the Blaj theological academy until 1934. From 1934 to 1937 he was archpriest in Bucharest and from 1937 to 1939 Aftenie was canon of the Blaj cathedral. On 1 October 1939, he became rector of the Blaj theological academy. On 12 April 1940, Aftenie was appointed bishop by Pope Pius XII, and on 5 June 1940 he was consecrated titular bishop of Ulpiana and Auxiliary bishop in the Blaj Cathedral, by metropolitan of Făgăraș and Alba Iulia Alexandru Nicolescu, and returned to Bucharest as vicar bishop at St. Basil's Church in Bucharest. His co-consecrators were Alexandru Rusu, Bishop of Maramureș, and Ioan Bălan, Bishop of Lugoj. After the death of Archbishop Nicolescu on 15 June 1941, he became Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Făgăraș and Alba Iulia.