Archaeological report on the exhumation of the Greek Catholic Bishop Vasile Aftenie (1899-1950), Bellu Catholic Cemetry, Bucharest

Abstract

This article presents the results of an archaeological intervention carried out in 2010 involving the exhumation of the remains of Bishop Vasile Aftenie (1899-1950). The intervention took place as part of the efforts of the Greek Catholic Church of Romania to beatify said bishop, who, from a Christian perspective, died a martyr’s death: he was arrested in 1948 by the Securitate (the Romanian secret police under communism), tortured and pressured into renouncing his faith. The inventory items discovered (fragments of clothing, a collar), the stature of the deceased as computed using anthropological analysis (and in keeping with witness statements), as well as circumstancial evidence confirms the oral testimony relating to the site of the bishop’s burial. Among the material used to fill the grave we found many coins as well as a glass phial with a metal lid containing some strands of hair and a slip of paper containing a prayer for the lifting of curses. The coins and phial, together with the candles from the grave, represent the material expression of the homage and prayers offered up by the faithful to the bishop. The results of our archaeological research rendered material expression to the relationship existing between the bishop’s remains and the faithful, confirming the fact that, long before the Romanian Greek Catholic Church began considering the bishop for beatification, some people had already begun honouring him as a saint of their own accord.