Great Lent – Father Pimen Vlad
23 February 2023
Icons and the Visual in the 21st Century – Father Theologos
28 February 2023
Watch a very beautiful and engaging interview with Daniel Savopol, a reporter from Kanal D, who reveals part of the unseen side of a Christian media professional—the joys and challenges in the context of today’s media.
Enjoy!
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us! Amen.
Fr. Theologos: We are here with Daniel Savopol, reporter, right?
Daniel Savopol: Reporter.
Fr. T.: A reporter from Kanal D, who came to film a program with us on the Holy Mountain, and as usual, as you know, I also do podcasts with them – this is our reward, beyond the reward from the good Lord – we do a program with them as well. Why? Because I really want those who are not seen to be seen too, to express the beauty of their hearts as well. And I really love Daniel very much and I loved the whole team very much, in the short time we have known each other, and because of that, I would like to ask him a few questions.
First of all, what do you do? And I have the tablet, yes, to be clear, because I wrote down my questions, of course we will not stick rigidly to these questions… wherever the discussion leads us… First question: why do you do television, why are you a reporter, what motivates you?
D. S.: When I was a kid, I liked to write and I first thought about doing cinematography. Then I realized that there was no way I could become a filmmaker in a timely manner and also make money from it. I worked in public food service to support myself through college, where I studied communication and political science. I studied journalism and was able to produce mini-films, news. Films about reality. I always liked doing that because I like to believe that I have always been an honest guy, a guy who didn’t chase money, a guy who chose to grow slowly but surely on a path he wants to be a righteous one. And little by little, I entered the press. My first job was at a news station, directly on TV. Now I already have 10 years in the press and hundreds of gray hairs.
Fr. T.: Yes, yes. Speaking of gray hairs, what are the challenges of a journalist?
D. S.: First of all, you have to be aware that you give up your personal life; if you want to do quality journalism, you will not have a personal life. If you want to do quality journalism, you’ll spend very little time with your family. While I was a correspondent in Constanța, whether it was the first TV station I worked at or the current TV station where I was a news correspondent, I dedicated myself completely. I think in those four years of working in Constanța, I missed only one event, that meant that every girlfriend I got, we parted ways right away, because no one could stay with a guy who rarely came home. So, I sacrificed a lot.
This made me a little tougher, with those around me as well; I did not accept anything less from others. I don’t consider myself a talented guy, I don’t consider myself a smart guy, but I consider myself a guy who is very, very hardworking and stubborn. You know, that’s the challenge. The challenge is the challenge of time, followed by the challenge – in this 21st century where information is fast, where news comes in by the second, where you have to be the first to somehow outpace your competition, to beat your competition – of not turning that into a goal and sometimes being able to hold back information rather than spreading fake news, rushed, erroneous information.
So, this workflow somehow challenges you a lot, also the phone becomes – and now I’m quoting an archaeologist I knew in Constanța – Constantin Chera – may God rest his soul! He said: “I don’t use the mobile phone—this modern means of torture.” It is so. You have 1 billion WhatsApp groups with firefighters, police, ambulance, the Prefecture, everyone, and when, for example, you have an emergency code – the snow is coming, simply, I don’t know, your phone goes off – you don’t sleep anymore, nothing else happens. But what can I say?
These would be the challenges and the biggest challenge is – yet it shouldn’t be, actually – to remain honest and not betray the public, not to take advantage of people, not to accept bribes, not to agree to sell out, to be honest. And God never abandons you! If you are honest, God will help you! So never step over dead bodies—never take advantage of people! And for this reason, when I chose my jobs, when I chose where to work, at least for now, I wanted to be somewhere far from politics – for me, it is something harmful.
Fr. T.: I understand, yes. Since you mentioned integrity and the presence of God, how does God manifest in a reporter’s life?
D. S.: Well, God manifests just like in the life of any other person. That is, a journalist, a reporter, who spends a lot of time in the field can die almost every day. Yes, for example, I was once, as I told you, in a red code snowstorm, and at that time we were driving, my cameraman colleague was driving a Matiz, poor car, so to speak, with a metal panel with some little flower stickers on it. We went down a road to try to see if there were people snowed-in, to do a report, to see if the authorities intervened there, if they were rescuing people, if there was a need to rescue some people. And the wind threw us straight into a ditch. We stayed there for about an hour stuck in the car. We walked looking for another car. You always pray to God in those moments, but also when you do your first live broadcasts or when you have live broadcasts later on, you pray to God, I pray to God. I am very nervous. I was also nervous before this interview, I was nervous before coming to the Holy Mount Athos. I always am. And I cannot see my life without God. Personally, I don’t see it.
I cannot do this job well without God. When I moved to Bucharest, as God willed, I moved to the Drumul Taberei neighborhood, into a studio apartment – the smallest studio apartment in the world – but it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a stone’s throw from the Saint Friday Church.
Fr. T.: Glory to God!
D. S.: Glory to God! And before every trip, I would stop by the church and pray: Lord, help me! And there was never a time when a coverage didn’t turn out, no way. And then, very importantly, you come back and thank Him for helping you.
Fr. T.: Of course.
D. S.: Not, “Thanks a lot God, wow you were amazing, we’ll talk again when I need you.” No! “Thank you!” That’s where God is, and very importantly, that’s how we Romanians are, Romanians fear God. As a journalist, if you fear God, if you understand that you have to walk the right path, you will still make mistakes, you will make an error in information, you will do something wrong, but it will not be intentional. You won’t be able to take advantage of the people at home, to lie to them that something is happening when something else is happening, to promote a politician who will destroy a community, because you fear God, you want to be righteous before Him, and that makes you upright in all aspects, both professionally and in personal life.
If you have a girlfriend, for example, you don’t go cheat on her because you wouldn’t want to be cheated on either; it is not pleasing before God. You don’t mock your parents. That’s roughly it. Just as God is present in our personal lives, He is also present in our professional lives.
Fr. T.: Yes, so it seems that God is the solution to everything. Certainly.
D. S.: Absolutely! Nothing can be done without Him, that’s how I see it, being an Orthodox Christian.
Fr. T.: I am very impressed, just as a side note, that you are near the church of Saint Friday, and our Cell is one of the few Cells on the Holy Mountain that has Saint Friday, [which is] St. Paraskevi, as its founder and protector. So, look, the saint brought you to her cell.
D. S.: That’s true!
Fr. T.: Glory to God!
D. S.: Glory to God! And I actually pray to St. Paraskevi at that church; I am also involved in activities related to helping people, helping animals. I really like animals very much, I mean I respect all of God’s creation, I love it. For me, everything that God made, there can’t be anything in this world that wasn’t made by God…
Fr. T.: Of course.
D. S.: Everything is made by God.
Fr. T.: That’s right.
D. S.: If, for example, I see a person on the street who needs help, I try to help them. If I see an animal that is injured, I take it to the vet. Why? Because it is God’s creation. I don’t make a distinction. Everything must be honored somehow, and I pray, and every time God helps me, and if He doesn’t, He knows why He doesn’t help me.
Fr. T.: That’s right. Since we’re talking about God, our Lord said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The Way and the Life are the Truth. What is the truth—and here I am referring a little to fake news and all these pressures—in the case of a journalist? How do you find the truth? How do you keep to the truth? You spoke a little about this, but if you want to elaborate a little more.
D. S.: Of course. Because now we have this bombardment of fake news, which is primarily caused—there is such a thing as unintentional fake news—by the huge flow of information. Information appears very quickly. There are these hourly news reports on television news stations. The information is processed at a rapid pace and sometimes it can be processed incorrectly, and this is where certain fragments of the news information can be erroneous. For example, there might be an accident involving – the first report of the emergency inspectorate mentions – three victims, but then later from sources, the information is corrected to say there are four victims. The information you passed on according to the authority is about three victims; the real number is four and you come with the update. So, [fake news] can intervene there.
Fake news can arise due to the reporter’s lack of training, because all professional fields suffer from a shortage of qualified personnel. The young people nowadays… I am 34 years old, and I am referring to those in their 20s, some of them come unprepared and can fall into this trap of fake news, but others are much better prepared than we are, yet fake news can come from a lack of training.
Or it could be intentional fake news. Of course. I am convinced, why not, that there might be— I don’t want to make a statement because I am not a court and I have no evidence to that effect—colleagues in the press who produce fake news. But if you want, I can give you a concrete example. I went to a march as an environmentalist, as a protector of the environment and nature, as best I can, in my humble way. We were there to protest against the killing of dogs in public shelters in exchange for contracts worth hundreds of thousands of euros, to protest against the mistreatment of animals. We marched on the idea of being vegetarian or consuming more plants as an alternative, both for the atmosphere and for these animals, because it is no longer like it used to be, with pigs living freely in people’s yard. Now we cram them together to make as much money as possible. We pump up the chickens, make them big, and slaughter them to make a lot of money. And we said we are against this current. I went there as a citizen.
Towards the end of the demonstration, being effectively pro-life, there were some people who, if they saw a snail, wouldn’t step on it because it would make them depressed for the rest of the day—that’s how empathetic these people were.
Fr. T.: Glory to God!
D. S.: May the Lord help us! And a news television channel came—I won’t name them now because it wouldn’t be nice towards our colleagues—and they slap a banner across the screen. I didn’t know why people were so angry at the protest: they put a very big banner on us and made us out to be neo-Marxists, saying that we were teaching people to eat bugs, while these people… I have spiders in my studio apartment, but I don’t kill them.
Fr. T.: Very well…
D. S.: I don’t kill spiders, I feel sorry for them, I can’t kill them. And people were like, “You’re making us eat cockroaches?” That’s how they expressed themselves. I mean, besides being uneducated, besides being illiterate, simply because they get a salary, if they are told, “Hey, write that, destroy those people,” they destroy them. So, it’s unacceptable fake news, that should be regulated. If you do something like that, they [should] shut down your television station, period.
Fr. T.: How? Can it be done? Practically.
D. S.: In my opinion, a law should be passed. Because I’ve seen headlines like that before—about the war in Russia, telling us that annexation is coming today, bombing tomorrow. Hold on a minute! You’re scaring an entire country. You can’t do that because hundreds of thousands of people are listening to you. And that’s why we journalists who have chosen to be honest, to do our job, that’s why I chose the TV station I work for, because I don’t do politics and I stay away from these things. And if you do something like that, I mean, lie to the people on TV, you get fired, no question about it.
Fr. T.: Glory to God! All my respect…
D. S.: That’s what a reporter should do, actually. That’s their job: to present the correct information to those at home.
Fr. T.: But don’t you lose likes? Don’t you lose traffic?
D. S.: Yes, but… why lose traffic? So, the reporter has no excuse to sell out.
Fr. T.: Of course.
D. S.: For example, a reporter from a certain “X” television station may come and say, “My boss will fire me if I don’t do that.” Well, so what if he fires you, my friend? Go, pick up a pickaxe, pick up a broom, do something, because no one has the right to laugh at you if you work. Rather than sullying yourself spiritually, it’s better to get your hands dirty. Yes, that’s pretty much what fake news is all about.
Fr. T.: Yes, glory to God, because unfortunately today there is a big problem with these things since people are pressured by interests, pressured by money, pressured by many things, by fame, and I think that’s the reason why they distort the truth both willingly and unwillingly.
D. S.: Yes, without excuse.
Fr. T: Yes, without excuse.
D. S.: I think father, I believe, that not even with God—I don’t know, I haven’t talked to God—but I don’t think these excuses will work before Him.
Fr. T: They don’t work.
D. S.: You go to the Last Judgement and say, “Yes, look, I had children to support.” And so you had to lie to four hundred thousand people, or what? I don’t understand. Or I’ll give you a more radical example. Let’s go back to World War II, to those who worked at Auschwitz. Well, they said, “Wait a minute, I was hired to kill.” Well, can you go to God and say, “Yes, I was doing my job”? No. You have to get where you need to get. We have no excuses.
Fr. T.: Of course. So, you think that a regulation would be good, but what if this regulation, this law that is enacted, is used abusively?
D. S.: Yes, it could be used as censorship. That is, a party could come to power and turn this law against a television station that criticizes it. So, it has to be done very intelligently. That, but better yet, and I think you’re right that the legislative part is somehow riskier—educating the public in such a way, but in a positive sense, that they reject you. “What? You lied to me once!” You know how it is: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Shame on me if you fool me a second time, I won’t watch you anymore. So people should actually reject anything that is a vlog, a blog, a television station, a radio station, a newspaper – if it lied to them, goodbye. Do you know what will happen? They won’t lie anymore because then they’ll go bankrupt.
Fr. T.: Yes, because I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, that a television station’s greatest asset is not its equipment, but its credibility.
D. S.: Exactly. Exactly. You walk down the street, that person recognizes you and says, “Hey, I liked you, man, you had courage, you went where others didn’t, good for you, you didn’t sell out!” Because, this way, people back home can also include you… because there are rotten apples, so to speak, in every profession, right? And there are some in journalism too, right? Because you can see it, right? And I don’t like, as a guy who has never taken a bribe and who has always done his job…
At one point, because I was a journalist, someone said: “Eh, surely you sell out too!” But that person who said that didn’t know that I was then writing news on a laptop taped together with tape that I bought for 200 lei from a colleague in the press, and to be able to work on it, I would shake the screen so it wouldn’t go black and keep it on a food container. He didn’t know this, because I didn’t want to sell myself. And I took two jobs and bought a laptop with my own hard-earned money. I slept less, but I earned it honestly. Is it possible? It is, right? Because no one is going to execute you by the wheel nowadays for something that you do. From my point of view, it’s very simple to have integrity, to be a responsible and upright man.
Fr. T.: That’s right, but it’s that moment of confession. A person must be dignified at that moment, he must have integrity at the moment of temptation.
D. S.: Exactly, exactly.
Fr. T.: That’s what we’re talking about. Glory to God! Since we’re talking about negative matters, can you tell us about a major trauma – not your own personal trauma, because that’s not the case, but the trauma of Romanians? Something that is currently harming Romanians and what could be done about it? What do you think hurts Romanians the most, meaning, your audience?
D. S.: Certainly, Romanians have been taught that they are good for nothing, they have been taught that they are cowards, that they are not valuable, that they’re sellouts, that they are thieves, that they are corrupt, that they are incapable of anything better. But in fact, they are. They let themselves be taught this way, or “Hey, you’re like a Romanian, come on, give it up, do a Romanian job,” we laugh all day long, we only promote the… “hillbillies,” we just mock ourselves. I don’t think there is any nation in all of this beautiful Europe that mocks itself like we do.
The policeman is always a fool, the country folk are always portrayed with a beer in their hand, meaning we always ridicule Romanians and put others, Westerners, on a pedestal, seeing them as superhuman and us as inferior, only good enough to work for them. It’s obvious that if you feed yourself with this mentality, that’s how you’ll be, but that’s how you’ll raise the next generations too, and that’s how you determine valuable people to leave the country, leaving behind people of lesser value who in turn teach their children the same thing—if you want to be good, you have to go to those foreigners, to learn. That’s not true, because Romanians have some very beautiful things.
Do you know what Romanians are like? Romanians are like this: for example, a friend with whom I participate in animal welfare activities called me – because those who love animals love people first and foremost: we discovered a man with terminal cancer, his face eaten away by cancer, an incredible torment, and the authorities did nothing to take him to a palliative care center, so my friend went crazy when she heard this. She informed me, and I called the mayor to do something. At first, he told me: “I can’t do anything because I keep sending this man to the hospital…” – and here I want to get to the beauty of Romanians – “…I send him to the hospital, but they send him back because of some bureaucratic stuff.”
I called those at the hospital. “Hello, folks, what are you doing, are you out of your minds?” And they say, “But, sir, he needs a referral from his family doctor.” “Are you crazy? Can’t you see this man is dying? What referral from the family doctor, what are you talking about?” And then I go back to the mayor and we come to a nice agreement. “Come on, sir, we’ll do something now, we’ll find a car, we’ll take him, we’ll take him to a palliative care center, we’ll do it the Romanian way, we’ll skip the bureaucracy and do something Christian, something good, we’ll skip these rules.” I mean, Romanians have a very beautiful side, a beauty that transcends the system.
Fr. T.: That’s right, it’s the humanity, the love…
D. S.: It is that humanity that, if it disappears from the human race, it will be gone forever. At one point, even Jack Ma said, “Don’t teach children math anymore” – well, teach them geometry and so on – “because the robots are coming, and you can’t beat robots at math, you beat them with art, with soul, that’s how you beat them,” that will continue to define you, this beautiful race that sees itself as dominant on this planet. The soul, the art.
Fr. T.: You mentioned many negative examples, can you give us a positive example, something that can help Romanians, give them courage?
D. S.: To give them courage… they must encourage themselves because no one else will do it. It seems like there is almost some interest to keep us oppressed here, not to develop in terms of infrastructure, not to develop culturally the way we deserve because we have value. Romanians are very smart, that’s why they hold important positions at NASA and in other important, valuable corporations. They are hard-working people, an indispensable workforce for Europe, perhaps even a driving force for the United Kingdom.
They have this power, but Romanians must understand that no one in the West is going to come and tell them, “Hey, you are valuable,” because they are not fools. We need to know how to tell ourselves this, and first and foremost, Romanians must not lose their faith, because there is now a global trend in which the Christian Orthodox religion is being transformed into a kind of fairy tale. They’re like, “Yeah, it’s a story, you’re kind of a fool if you believe in it, come, be like us.” And what does “be like us” mean? To be limited. And a spiritual person is harder to manipulate. A person who is introspective, a person who stays alone with themselves—which is the hardest thing to do, to be alone with yourself—is much harder to manipulate.
So, in my opinion, Romanians must remain Christian, Romanians must rediscover themselves, that beauty that lies there in a latent state.
Fr. T.: And to be brave.
D. S.: We are condemned to promote it, we must promote it.
Fr. T.: It is necessary! And do you think that all these things – this manipulation – are a concerted attack or a fruit of…?
D. S.: Yes, from my point of view, on a global level, at the moment, even if there is no evidence in the sense that someone from a large corporation comes and says, “Hey, I’m manipulating people,” it is impossible, I mean, you see very big fashion brands, and I’ve been following them on TikTok, because I made a TikTok account myself to follow these phenomena, but on TikTok you can filter them, you can see clips about Orthodoxy or you can see clips about ugly things, but you choose. There are some fashion brands and I’m not giving examples now because I think everyone knows them, that effectively promote pedophilia, satanism. So, it’s clear, it’s indisputable. If they speak as loud as they can, well, you can’t stay silent either, because if you stay silent you leave all the audiovisual part to them, or the media part, and at that moment they will come and crush you.
And more than that, there are people who have been very easily censored, silenced on social networks and their accounts have been deleted for some serious or relatively minor things, but what about someone who promotes pedophilia? Isn’t that serious?
Fr. T.: I don’t know if there’s anything more serious…
D. S.: What could be worse than that? Oh, you’re not taking it down, why? Well, do you want to… and at one point, the fashion house said that they had involuntarily posted those pictures of children wearing some masochistic outfits.
Fr. T.: God forbid!
D. S.: How come you didn’t involuntarily post a cross?
Fr. Yes, for example, among other things.
D. S.: Involuntarily put up a cross, with Christ. No, you don’t like that.
Fr. T.: And they left it there “involuntarily” for I don’t know how long.
D. S.: Exactly, and it’s a huge corporation, and you realize that the material goes through a hundred hands before it gets posted somewhere. So, these are clearly deliberate, and those who have remained Orthodox Christians have a moral duty: not to remain silent. Because if there were people hundreds of years ago who were being tortured on the wheel, they knew they [would be] tortured on the wheel, yet they didn’t remain silent, you who are now just marginalized – you lose your job, or I don’t know what else happens – how can you come and comment that you can’t oppose the movement? You have no excuse.
Fr. T.: That’s right, and I believe that television would have and has a very, very important formative role.
D. S.: Yes.
Fr. T.: Is this role fulfilled today, how do you see it?
D. S.: Yes, and let me tell you something, there was a lie propagated in the public space, a mistaken mentality, I think the media were lying to themselves, “We give people what they want, that’s what they want – we give them what they want.” No, no, wrong. Look, for example, at us, at Kanal D, Dan Negru came with a cultural show. He gives you a definition, and based on that definition taken from the dictionary, you think about what word would match it and it puts your mind to work. And those at home also think about what that word might be. And it attracts viewers; it is often number one in its segment. If you didn’t try, would you know? You wouldn’t know. You would think that yes, we should only broadcast gossip. No, it’s possible.
People want quality. If from now on all the TV stations join forces and provide quality, non-stop, quality films, everything you need that is high-quality, people will only ask for quality. If you give them something trashy, they’ll say, “Take that away from here.” People have already started themselves… So, we educate people, but they also educate us when they say “Yes, we want what you gave us.”
They give you feedback and then what does the TV station do? They make two more shows like that and eliminate the tabloid stuff. So, we can help each other, but you can’t turn a person into a trash bin where you throw garbage, you can’t do that because at some point they will get fed up and will vent, they will vomit that garbage on you.
Fr. T.: I understand. And I don’t think it’s a strategy that will be successful in the long term?
D. S.: What are you referring to?
Fr. T.: The garbage…
D. S.: No. You don’t have a strategy because, first of all, you’ve seen that we hardly even recycle garbage. There’s nothing to it, and in the end, if you want to develop something, people don’t think about sustainable development anymore, now everything is like…, everything passes quickly, everything is made not to last: cars are made not to last, phones are made not to last.
Have you seen the Roman Empire built roads? Well, they thought for eternity, yes, so they didn’t think like, “Hey, I only have four years as mayor.” No, my mandate is for eternity. If the same kind of thinking were applied in the audiovisual media sector, that is, you think you are shaping generations, as you said about TikTok that it can distort generations of billions of people, but which of course can also be used as a weapon. I mean, for example, as a state that produced TikTok, you can provide quality content for your own population and low-quality content for others, thus sabotaging the populations of those states. Those who represent those states should educate their people so that they realize these things and choose their own algorithm accordingly.
But anyway, other learning systems should be formed, meaning to return to reading, as you said, in order to build sustainable generations. Otherwise, entire nations will collapse because if we become a planet of illiterates and people lacking faith, you realize that the end will come very quickly. Especially if we dumb ourselves down and still want to make robots that won’t dumb down, we won’t be around here for very long.
Fr. T.: What do you see as the value system of a television station or a media center today, and what needs to be changed in this value system?
D. S.: They must think sustainably, they must not lie to their viewers or readers, depending on the case, because information is the foundation of media. So, first, we learn to provide correct information, and after we’ve learned that — and this is for those who are just starting journalism — then they begin to play with words and so on. They must start from correctly informing the public. The media institutions that will succeed in the long term will be those led by people with principles. These principles are those of truth.
I am convinced that if there are people of faith who will hold these leadership positions, those television stations will go in the right direction, and the reporter, this small pawn in the field, holds great power. And this little pawn on the field, let’s say, I’ll give you an example: let’s say that here at Kanal D – I don’t want to praise them now, but here I do the job properly and that’s why I’ve been with them for almost six years. Because I do it without political pressure, peacefully, correctly.
But let’s say – and maybe those who are starting in journalism now will watch this – they go to a television station or a media trust somewhere where their bosses tell them to find something bad, something bad that can hurt someone or something. You don’t find it. I’ll give you an example. I am an animal lover and if I were working for another television station now, at the beginning, at the age of 20, and I had investigated the mass killing of dogs in Romania, I know how much money they made from it, I know how they killed them illegally, I know everything because I presented all those things to the criminal investigation authority. I know that if I now report that there are dogs somewhere, they go and kill them all. If you send me to the field, I go and I don’t find them for you. I see them, but I don’t find them for you, because I have God above me. I don’t care about the salary.
I am a poor boy, I started out poor, but I rose up with faith in God and without going against my principles. Or if there is something from the field, you make the material that ends up in the editorial office. And also, everyone who is now starting in the press should understand this: they can reform the entire system, because if all the reporters from the media organizations that are said to be problematic were to say, “Hey, we’re all quitting,” Then the owners would be forced to say, “We can’t send these to lie to the people on TV anymore. Look, they’re all leaving. What are we going to do? Are we going to go out to the field in their place?”
So that’s where we need to — that small person, the ordinary citizen can bring down the system. Just like fish organize in schools, they are huge, bigger than whales. They can change the whole system. The citizen.
Fr. T.: They have to be brave.
D. S.: They must have courage, and that’s another problem we have in Romania: Romanians wait for others to set an example—come on, let me see someone with courage first.
Fr. T.: That’s why I asked you for an example.
D. S.: Yes, because you’ve seen that Romanians generally do not know how to dance, many don’t and yet they join the circle dances. When they see the circle dance, they say, “This guy and that guy dances, no one will look at my feet to notice that I dance badly.” No, the Romanian must step out of the circle dance, dance alone, dance beautifully in the middle of the dance floor and set an example for others so they come forward too. We need people, political leaders, NGO leaders to set an example for others, to encourage them and show them that they too can be part of the solution, part of the change. And that evil is not a long-term solution, evil is bankrupt from birth.
Fr. T.: Glory to God! As a final word, what would you like to say? What would you like to say to Romanians or to everyone watching us?
D. S.: I want to tell Romanians that they are beautiful, they are beautiful through their faith. I want to tell them that they are also ugly and to get rid of that ugliness, it is a powder foundation which I don’t know how it got on their face, they need to take it off right now. It will take time, but they should do it. Individually and together, we can rise from this mire of indifference in which we sometimes fall, and with small, small steps we will get better.
Fr. T.: And the good Lord will help us!
D. S.: If you become good, you do good further, you are good, you are part of the good. And to keep their Christian values.
Fr. T.: Amen. May the good Lord help us!
D. S: Lord help us!
Fr. T.: Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us! Amen.
Online commemoration lists and donations
May the Lord help us!
Online Commemoration Lists and Donations
May the Lord help us!
If you have a bank card and wish to send commemoration lists and donations online using your card, and/or to support our philanthropic activity, including this site, please fill out the form below to make a small donation. The form is secure – we use Stripe for payment processing – a world leader in this field. We do not collect your personal data.
If you do not have a card, or do not wish to use it, visit the webpage for Online Donations and Commemoration Lists.
We will pray for your loved ones! (Please do not include inessential details like wishes, degree of kinship, introductions etc. JUST the name!)
Especially for recurring commemoration lists, we ask that you please keep them to under 20 names long. If you include a member of the family, we add “and for their families.”
