VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Cardinal Lucian Muresan, major archbishop of Fagaras and Alba Iulia and head of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, died Sept. 25 at the age of 94. Much of the cardinal’s seminary education, his ordination and his early ministry took place in secret because Romania’s communist government banned the Greek Catholic Church in 1948. He was born May 23, 1931, in Ferneziu, Romania. In December 1964, he was secretly ordained a priest in the basement of a building in Cluj, Romania, and for decades he carried out his ministry clandestinely. After communism collapsed, he was elected bishop of Maramures in 1990 and the archbishop of Fagaras and Alba Iulia in 1994. Recognizing the rebirth and vitality of the once-persecuted Romanian Greek Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI elevated its status to that of a major archbishopric in 2005 and recognized then-Archbishop Muresan as the major archbishop.

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