Ion Antonescu and the Church

This study refers to the attitude of Ion Antonescu towards the Romanian Orthodox Church. The documentary sources used for this study which, as far as I am aware, is the first of its kind, are drawn from the transcripts of the governmental meetings, held mostly during September 1940 – April 1941, i.e. from the moment Ion Antonescu took over the supreme leadership of the and until he decided to focus primarily on military preparations. This study shows that Ion Antonescu considered that the Orthodox Church should play the role of a kind of special ministry of the state, in charge of facilitating control over the population; in Antonescu`s vision, the state was to be the main beneficiary of such an arrangement, but it was willing to share those benefits with the church. For Ion Antonescu, this „philosophy” had two main theses–consequences. The first was that the Romanian state needed the Orthodox Church and, therefore, had to support its existence by both political and material means, and the second was that the priesthood, in its activity, had to meet minimum „ethical–moral standards” that would allow it to fulfill its role as an instrument of ideological control over the population.