Roman Braga

Archimandrite Roman Braga was a Bessarabian monk and priest, a confessor in the communist prisons, and reposed in 2015. He is venerated by the faithful without synodal canonization.

He was born on 2 April 1922 at Condrita in Bessarabia, the last of seven children, raised by a devout mother near the monastery of Condrita. At twelve he was sent to Caldarusani Monastery, then to the monastic seminary at Cernica; there he formed lifelong friendships with the great spiritual fathers of Romania to come, Sofian Boghiu, Felix Dubneac, Benedict Ghius, Grigore Babus and Gratian Radu. He graduated from the Theological Institute in Bucharest in 1947 magna cum laude.

In 1948 he was arrested; he spent a year in interrogation, at Jilava, then in solitary confinement at Pitesti, where the re-⁠education experiments took place. In 1951 he was sent to a labour camp in the Danube Delta and released on parole in 1953. He was tonsured a monk in 1954 and ordained deacon at Iasi, where he served until 1959 under the surveillance of the Securitate. In 1959 he was arrested again, accused of belonging to the Burning Bush movement, and sentenced to eighteen years of forced labour; he was held in camps in the Delta until the amnesty of 1964, when he was ordained a priest at Oradea. He served a village in the north, where he organised a choir of a hundred children.

In 1968 the regime considered him an unwanted element and the Patriarchate sent him to Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1972 he was invited to the United States by Archbishop Valerian; he translated Romanian church music into English and served in parishes. From 1983 to 1988 he was spiritual father at the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Pennsylvania, then retired to the Dormition Monastery in Michigan, where he remained to the end. In 2015 he received the Order of Saint Romanos for his contribution to liturgical music. He reposed on 28 April 2015.