Group of Basarabian priests call on Metropolitan Petru to resign honorably

Some 1/3 of the parishes of the Basarabian Metropolitan Church ask for the honorable resignation of Metropolitan Petru. Such a statement was made public on Tuesday, July 8, at a news conference in Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to the priest Petru Buburuz, 44 priests insist that the Metropolitan resigns because he cannot face the requirements, “being manipulated by the Christian-Democratic People's Party (PPCD) and especially by Vlad Cubreacov, the deputy president of the party, to get political capital.” Petru Buburuz says a group of clerics addressed a memo on June 10 to His High Holiness Petru asking him to improve the administrative structure of the eparchial management and to remove Vlad Cubreacov from this structure, “because he negatively and destructively influences the work of the Metropolitan Church.” Then, they also asked to convene a general assembly of priests to discuss the problems of the church, but the attempt to have a dialog failed. The signing priests are being intimidated, “including by Cubreacov,” says the priest. He claims the PPCD deputy president would interfere with managing the money of the Church, allocated by the Romanian Patriarchate. The priests say “Vlad Cubreacov has big influence over the Metropolitan Petru and uses the money for the needs of his own and his party.” “This way, Cubreacov, who is very authoritarian, decides where the money should go, directing it to parishes where he has relatives.” Father Buburuz says “the methods used within the Metropolitan Church are purely KGB-like — they identify the people disagreeing with the applied methods to be summoned, not the problem to be solved.” Father Anatol Goncear says enemies will be glad in vain with the situation from the Basarabian Church, because this temptation is a normal process demonstrating the viability of the Church. The 11 priests who held the news conference say the eparchial structure now is not healthy and the ones willing to change will never give up this Church, which does not belong to a single man, but to the clerics and parishioners. “We declare that the parishes with believing priests are component parts of the Basarabian Church and they suffer the attacks against the Church, too, thus, they cannot be hostile to the Metropolitan Church, but demand to remove the Church out of the influence of any political party. The Basarabian Metropolitan Church is ours. It is interwoven in our blood and we'll not leave it,” some priests have stated. According to them, the PPCD is behind Cubreacov, which used the image of the Church and has done many things under the wings of the clerics from this Church. The priests say they submitted a similar memo in 2002, “and then Cubracov promised the Council he would revenge on all those who signed it, and this is exactly what he does with the help of Metropolitan Petru. Under these circumstances, the 44 signatories felt they had to ask the Metropolitan to honorably withdraw, “all the more that he recognized his inability to manage and his wish to withdraw to a monastery.” There are some 120-150 Basarabian parishes in Moldova, although their exact number has never been made public. A press release of the Basarabian Church reads that Metropolitan Petru is open for “parental dialog”, civilized and constructive, and supports any suggestion related to improving the eparchial life and stepping up the missionary activity of the Church, but categorically rejects the pressure and rally as a discussion form, “an attitude dishonoring and disqualifying for God's servants.”