Tanacu, Romania - One and a half year ago, the Romanian society, the Orthodox Church and the media were stunned by a case revealing how in a remote area of Romania, Buzau county, in a newly constructed monastery, the prior of the monastery engaged to purging the evil from his community through extreme exorcism methods that ended with the crucifixion and horrifying death of a young nun.

When confronted by media and the state institutions, the prior, Daniel Corogeanu, defended the exorcistic practices he claimed as part of an integral Orthodox tradition. A heated public debate followed, the Orthodox Church condemning the brutality of his methods. Finally, he and several nuns involved in the lethal exorcism were charged with second degree murder.

On February 10, 2007 the trial had its last session. Daniel Corogeanu and the four nouns were sentenced to 17 years of prison.

Habitus presented this case in an extended material on our site last year . Habitus also offered a translation for the official press release issued by the Romanian Orthodox Patriarchate regarding this issue.

The are no new developments involved in this case; it is a simple case of misusing the influence monks have over uneducated faithful and of abuse of spiritual power in relation with the hierarchy. But there is an unseen aspect in the behaviour of the five convicted in the Tanacu case.

First, during the trial, Daniel Corogeanu started to construct an image of himself as a martyr. He did not speak in his or the nuns defence, he gave his blessing to the court at the beginning of each session, he only spoke about his will to undermine the power of evil in this world. He had no word of comfort for the relatives of the nun killed by crucifixion, starvation and deprivation of water, who were present in the court.

The actual facts of the case are not that surprising for a well-informed person about the ordeals some of the communities are forced to endure. Buzau, an agrarian area south-east of the Carpathian mountains where Tanacu is situated, is a rural region where the locals are old and work the land the same way it was done 100 years ago. The young people fled to big cities or they are working in Spain, Italy or France, because their native area did not offer them anything to support themselves. Who was left behind? The elderly and the women, the latter group being very much involved in the life of the Church (the Romanian province of Moldova offers the largest area of recruitment for nuns and monks). But well-trained priests also avoid the area, because they see it as a no-go zone, where spirituality is as it was a century ago and the religious mentality resembles the medieval one. Thus, the local church is left at the mercy of priests and religious leaders like Daniel Corogeanu.

Because of their lack of education, but also because of the dissolution of secular and orthodox authority in the area, people developed another system of judging the character of the priests. If his methods are violent, if his discourse often mentions the dark powers and the unseen war against them, he will increase his chances of being accepted as a priest with a special gift. People will hurry to support him and to give any help they can for spiritual projects of great magnitude. This is also the behaviour of rich people in the area, who are attracted by this rage against the secular authority and against established Christianity. In the end, they come to deny the authority of the local bishop and refuse to indulge the canonical law (it came as no surprise that in the beginning Daniel Corogeanu and his community at Tanacu rejected the delegation of the local bishop and refused to recognize the authority of the police and secular law).

What has changed in the behaviour of Corogeanu and what triggered this change? First, he learnt the hard way there is no such thing as bad publicity. His megalomania, his belief he's a great spiritual leader attracted a lot of disoriented people. All those who were disregarded or disadvantaged by the secular law or are unhappy with the church authorities have found their shepherd. Now, the only thing he had to do was to pose as a spiritual guide, a role-model, to have a saintly behaviour and, like Christ, accept his punishment without any protests. The rest will follow automatically: he will serve his time (probably a shortened period, because it can be imagined that he will behave well in prison), he will continue his spiritual mission even there and, why not, make more adepts, and he will be liberated with an aura of a saint, punished because he fought the powers of the devil in this world. Already he has been contacted by lots of sponsors, ready to give him the means to enlarge his monastery. His community is still standing and in Buzau County, things will not change in such a way that people will refuse his spiritual guidance.

The Orthodox Church expressed its official point of view about the ritual of exorcism, about priests serving without having the written approval of the local bishop and about all the regulations Daniel Gorogeanu and his nouns have stepped upon. But they didn't offer an alternative. Without a mission sent to this area to change people's mentalities and beliefs, without regaining the trust of the faithful, without well-trained priests and a bishop aware of his great responsibility, the Tanacu case will only be the first in a greater series. Already people are thinking about investigating old cases.

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