This presentation will examine how the history of repression has shaped contemporary Greek-Catholic identity in Romania and how narratives of persecution continue to inform present-day confessional self-understanding in the country - The repression of the Greek Catholic Church in Romania after 1948 fundamentally reshaped its identity, transforming it from a legally recognised Eastern Catholic Church into a clandestine community centred on loyalty to Rome. The Church was abolished by Decree No. 358 on 1 December 1948, and its forced incorporation into the Romanian Orthodox Church, created a situation in which adherence to Greek-Catholicism became a religious and political act (Bucur 2013). The 1957 show trial and life sentence of Bishop Alexandru Rusu exemplified how communist justice and the Securitate constructed 'political guilt' to criminalise loyalty to Rome and suppress any attempt at ecclesial reorganisation (ibidem). The experience of an underground existence corresponds to Bociurkiw's description of the 'Catacomb Church' in the Soviet context, where institutional repression paradoxically reinforced internal cohesion and symbolic boundaries (Bociurkiw 1977). From a social identity theory perspective, repression can intensify identification with the in-group by accentuating differences with the dominant out-group (Abrams 1990). In the Romanian case, the forced 'return' to Orthodoxy and the criminalisation of communion with Rome strengthened confessional otherness, transforming loyalty to the Byzantine rite in union with Rome into a symbol of resistance. After 1989, the memory of persecution became embedded in ecclesial discourse as a foundational reference point, structuring claims to restitution, recognition and continuity (Stan 2007).
