We are in the Centenary of the Great Union, so it is appropriate to take a look back at those who, with great sacrifices, even with the price of life, changed the course of history, succeeded in achieving the centuries-long temptation of the Romanians in Transylvania, mother, brothers over the mountains. In the run-up to the Alba Iulia Assembly of December 1, 1918, in the conditions of the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a result of the First World War, the Transylvanian Romanians, by their own power and by their own will, chose local councils, National Local Armed Forces (armed) were formed, taking over the administration of communes and villages.
In such crucial moments, personalities come into history, because they identify with the aspirations of many, assume great responsibilities and risks for the sake of the realization of ideals.
Over the centuries, here, in Transylvania, Romanian bearers of unity of faith, language, nation, and country were priests and teachers, through the few villages where Romanian schools existed.
In the autumn of 1918, Cristiş, the small town near Turda, was not left out of those troubles and events. As in the surrounding villages: Luna, Grind (Luncani), Agârbiciu (Viişoara), Hărastăş (Călăraşi), the peasants here came almost to the limit of hunger, and forcibly stepped into the mansion of the Magyar Jewish maid Simion Mendel, taking cereals from his full barns. The gendarmes intervened brutally to protect the estate’s property. The peasants shouted, “If you shoot fire, we put fire!”
Biographical sketches
Priest in Cristiş was Father Ioan Opris, born in 1878 in the village of Dumbrava, Căpuş commune, a village halfway between Cluj and Huedin. After the primary school in the village, he followed the Hungarian Gymnasium at Huedin, then the theological studies at the Andreian Seminary in Sibiu (1895-1898). Here he had teachers of the most prominent people of the time, both as an intellectual training (with doctorates taken at Vienna, Berlin or Budapest), and by their involvement in the Romanians’ struggle for rights and liberties. Many of his teachers had years of imprisonment in Seghedin or Vaut to support the Memorandum Movement in 1892. That is why the theologian students saw the professors at the chair as true heroes: “Seghedine, Seghedine, / Pline’s prisoners You / In Yourself in Your Innocent Romanian / Vatican. “
As shown above, in a large number of localities around Turzii and throughout Transylvania there occurred a kind of local peasant rebellion, resulting in the expulsion of the Gros and Germans, followed by the devastation of their fortunes, the main target being the cereals to provide the daily food of needy families. The Hungarian gendarmes indulge in all sorts of atrocities, criminal repression is committed throughout Transylvania. The Hungarian army also resorts to executions against Romanians for lack of loyalty to the Hungarian state.
Under these circumstances, the advocate Dr. Amos Frâncu, the president of the Ardeal Military Organization, launched in Cluj on October 28, 1918, a fulminating call for the Romanian population from the Apuseni Mountains in order to stop the murders committed by Hungarians from hatred and despair. We reproduce this manifesto entirely, because it played a decisive role in the evolution of subsequent events:
THE MOUTH, BRIDGE,
The Emperor unleashed his subjects by road vows. He is no longer emperor! Do strangers make death! The hour of deliverance sounded! We Romanian masters are on our fate! We’re gonna cut our fate with the weapons in our hand.
LA ARME!
Weapons for the unification of all Romanians. In ’48 the Motives cried to Blaj: We want the union with the country.
The union brings in the gift: Earth and Liberty! From you brave Arieş, Someş and Cris are waiting for the commune to gird the guns first.
All that the kings of Hungary and the foreign masters of Transylvania have kidnapped us; pastures, forests and ponds, Romania and its unchallenged King will give us! They will give us both hands what Horea and Iancu have asked for.
We, the Romanian officers and soldiers of Transylvania, swore to the King of Romania!
From you Mooth, brethren, expect us to follow us first.
LA ARME! No arms are right, neither peace nor country!
Unite with brothers everywhere, Romania to be one and inseparable as the Holy Trinity!
I took it, Dr. Amos Frâncu, grandson of the tribune, the old defender of Moti’s command! From the commission of officers and soldiers, I command the tribes of the past. For everything I command and promise, I’m good with my head and honor!
Brothers! Join Abrud, Câmpeni, Zlatna, Gilău, Huedin, Brad, Hălmagiu. There leave guard guards and start at Cluj and Balgrad as you get closer! Unfold the Romanian flag! Keep the local order.
Take care of the forests and pitches as the eyes of your head! Yours will be through Romanian law!
Keep everyone’s life, wealth and peace! …
On weapons! Ascended from tombs, Horea in Bălgrad, Iancu in Ţebea, Axente in Blaj. I call you on behalf of Christ, on weapons!”
Printed in countless copies, this manifesto was spread in almost all the localities of the Apuseni Mountains. This “call to arms” came to the Orthodox priest Ioan Opris of Cristiş, who read it to the villagers. Wise mediator with parental spirit After the conflict on Simion Mendel’s farm in Cristiş, the Hungarian gendarmes were to be arrested. The priest intervened in solving the problem. To protect the villagers from arrests and retaliation, not knowing how things will evolve, he urged parishioners to take back the cereals taken from the farm. They listened to him, followed his advice and took back some of the grain as long as they had, and the manager was pleased, glad that the peasants were relieved, without the risk of eventual devastation or arson. He was preparing the election of the delegates for the Assembly in Alba Iulia.
On November 6, 1918, the priest together with the villagers, in the courtyard of Cristi’s church, enthusiastically welcomed a delegation of Romanian leaders composed of Dr. Augustin Ratiu (nephew of the memorandum Dr. Ioan Ratiu) and Dr. Sever Mureşan. They came with a carriage and for the first time they fluttered a Romanian flag. Late for the country’s love After leaving them in the applause of the people, a group of Hungarian gendarmes arrives with a wagon from the neighboring village Poiana. They see the crowd gathered and the priest at the door of the church at their head. A gendarme with a voice of hatred roars in the Hungarian language, which everyone understood: “Do not bloody, the polluted pope!” Then, in his blind anger, he directs his rifle to the priest and draws.
The priest fell in disgust of the crowd, dying two days later, on 8 November 1918. He was only 39 years old. He died because he allowed the flag of the Romanian flag to be raised, and because he had organized the ceremony of venerating the oath of faith of the villagers from Cristiş, which symbolized the ideal of the reunification of Great Romania, priest Ioan Opris was “the first sacrifice for our national ideal on the Field of Mihai Viteazul near Turda”, as the People’s Folk at that time wrote in the November 15, 1918 issue. and the state of the state of the Tragedy and the wickedness of the crime are increased by the fact that a desperate wife, a widow with no fortune, with seven young children, of whom the youngest, Remus, only a few months left behind. Through the Romanian press, the news about the murder of Cristiş spreads throughout Transylvania. The Romanian Telegraph newspaper, which appeared in Sibiu, launches the call to help “the widow and the seven orphans of priest Ioan Opris of Cristiş, killed by the Hungarian gendarmes”, publishing in several numbers the list of donors starting with the arch. Eusebiu Roşca, Rector of the Theological and Pedagogical Institute of Sibiu (100 crowns). The time goes by, the aids are no longer coming, and the new state of Great Romania refuses to grant a pension to the family as a “widow and war orphans”, on the grounds that the murder happened before December 1, 1918, when Cristiş was not yet belonging to the Romanian state. In spite of this, Father Ioan Opris, according to the documents submitted to the file, was part of the Romanian National Council in Turda, swearing “on October 29, 1918, a new style, the belief of the King of Romania and the cause, the union of Transylvania with the Patria, the so-called priest, known and old national fighter, commander of the National Guard and of the armed people of Cristiş and surroundings “, as the President of the Romanian National Senate in Transylvania and the Military Tribunal in 1918, Amos Frâncu.
The Honor of a Nation was buried with military honors near the wooden church, where he received his martyr’s crown, the funeral service being officiated by a group of priests headed by the Archpriest Turzii, Father Jovian Murişianu. By the Royal Decree no. 463 from 1924, the priest Ioan Opriş receives the title “National Hero”, in honor of the commune, Cristiş will be called Oprişani, and the street where the churches used to serve Ioan Opris, the martyr hero, received his name. After 1950, following the merger to Turda, the village of Oprisani became the district of the same name.
The life of a mother in turn followed the plight of a large family with no income. Widowed Priest Silvia Opriş took his life in the chest, protecting his children, taking them to schools and then to college. The children, who have come to public pity, have received a scholarship from the Orthodox Church or from charitable societies, raising their relatives. Periodically, the newspapers of the day brought to the attention of the public this revolting case of injustice. After 17 years, in 1935, the priestess widow of Oprisani was sought by a Greek lawyer who came from Bucharest. She learned from her newspapers about her case. She offers her a retirement pension without any fee, provided she gives her 50% (or half) of the retroactive entitlements she will be able to obtain.
After only a few months he will win the trial and the lady priestess becomes pensioner for the rest of her life with retroactive rights for several years (not for the whole period), the lawyer taking his share. After all seven children have come to a good state, two girls, Cornelia and Sidonia , became a priestess, Veturia teacher, Aurel attorney, Valentin and Remus engineers with important services, and Marian technician with a high qualification, another hard blow for the family and for the poor mother. Remus, the youngest of the children, escaped from war, a forest engineer, married a college colleague, being assigned to the Forestry District of Cetatea Cetăţii, a settlement with a Hungarian population near Sovata. Here a little girl is born, on December 6, 1945, on the feast of St. Nicholas, whom Niculina baptized.
On April 6, 1946, they were at home in the evening with the burning lamp. He is assassinated through the window with a hunting weapon in the presence of his wife and baby. He was only 28 years old. In the investigation, from the whole village, none heard the shot and nobody knew anything. Remus was brought and buried in Oprisani next to his father, the martyr hero of 1918. The obituary of Remus Opris is still kept in the family’s archive, where, on the yellowed page, he writes just like on the father’s cross His wife, Silvia Opriş (1883-1968), year after year, suddenly unloaded his soul, revealing episodes of the long series of sufferings through which he was given to pass. In the memory of the martyr priest in the yard Orthodox Parish Orthodox Parish “Dormition of the Mother of God” Oprisani I Turda, in 2004 was a homemade bust, the work of the sculptor Emilian Savinescu. The Turda public authorities conferred the title of “Honorable Citizen” post-mortem to the priest martyr Ioan Opris, and the school in the immediate vicinity was named “Ioan Opris School”.
