Alexandru Todea

Roman Catholic Cardinal. Born in Teleac to a family of peasants, Alexandru Todea was the the thirteenth of sixteen children. Receiving his education at the lyceum Sfântul Vasile cel Mare of Blaj under the French Assumptionist Fathers and later at the Pontifical Urban Athenaeum de Propaganda Fide of Rome, he earned a doctorate in theology at the latter studium. Ordained priest on March 25, 1939, he served as secretary to the Eastern Rite metropolitan. With the Catholic Church of the Byzantine-Romanian Rite suppressed in 1948, he was arrested several times between 1945 and 1948, being eventually sentenced by Romania's Communist rulers to life imprisonment for high treason, once sharing a cell with five other bishops and eight priests, later recounting with some humor that he was made head of the lavatory cleaning brigade. Elected bishop of the titular see of Caesaropolis and appointed auxiliary of Făgăraş and Alba, he received his episcopal consecration on November 19, 1950 in secret in