Today, within the commemoration of the 27 Ukrainian new martyrs, we also remember the story of Blessed Theodore Romza. Theodore was born in 1911 in Transcarpathia, which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary, and after its dissolution became one of the autonomous territories of Czechoslovakia in 1919. The boy grew up in a poor Rusyn family, being the ninth child. After graduating from high school, he studied theology in Rome and was ordained in 1936 for the Byzantine rite. In September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland and thus became an unwelcome neighbor of Transcarpathia. At the end of 1939, Theodore was appointed spiritual director of the Uzhhorod seminary. In September 1944, at the age of thirty-three, he received episcopal ordination. A month later, the Red Army entered the territory of Transcarpathia, immediately beginning arrests and systematic deportations of Rusyns to Siberia and Donbas, where they were deployed to rebuild the war-damaged industry (Stalin ordered the destruction of all industrial enterprises in Ukraine; his order to destroy the largest dam on the Dnieper in 1941 claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians).
The population of Transcarpathia was pressured to convert to the Orthodox Church controlled by the Soviet regime; Catholic priests were eliminated, and the property of the Greek Catholic Church was confiscated. Under army supervision, the Soviet Union began to enforce the separation of the "liberated" Transcarpathia from Czechoslovakia and its annexation to the USSR – this officially took place in June 1945 after a staged referendum; the Soviet Union immediately established six concentration camps for those inconvenient to the regime on the newly occupied territory. The popular Greek Catholic bishop Theodore quickly found himself on the NKVD’s list, whose services were attended by tens of thousands of pilgrims loyal to Rome and dissatisfied with the annexation. Therefore, the secret police planned a "traffic accident" for the end of October 1947, in which a military vehicle collided with the bishop's carriage (his car had been confiscated by his comrades). Theodore survived the accident and was taken to a hospital in Mukachevo, where he began to recover. Consequently, the Soviet police changed the hospital staff: they replaced a nurse with their agent, who murdered the bishop on the night of November 1, 1947. Pope John Paul II proclaimed Theodore blessed – along with 26 other Ukrainian martyrs of German and Soviet totalitarianism – in June 2001.
(processed according to the book by A. Riccardi "The Century of Martyrs" and according to the website of the Redemptorists)
