The following is a translation from an article that appeared in the Feb. 2000 issue of the Romanian newspaper Universul Ziar Popular.

In a village in the heart of the Apuseni Mountains: 
Father John of Posaga takes demons out of people

Many Satu Mare residents found their healing

If one would look on the map of Romania for the village Posaga, it would be very hard to find.  It is hidden somewhere at the top of the mountains, hard to reach, but those who get there can live an experience they will never forget.  The reason, over here lives a special priest, named John, one of the few priests who have the gift of taking out the bad spirits out of man and to heal through the power of prayer.  He made this village a spiritual center of Ardeal[^1], where people come from all over the country^[2] to see him and receive his help.  I had the privilege to go there and what is going on is of the supernatural, a returning to the biblical times.

A place the world has forgotten

The traveler reaches Posaga hard.  One must go on unpaved roads, and when you are about half way between Turda and Campeni, a curve to the right makes you go under a high gate and enter the village.  It is as if one would enter another world.  After you get more familiar with the place you will be convinced that indeed, it is something else.  There are mountains all around sitting almost ready to fall on you, the cold waters of the river Aries, close to its springs, where people come to wash their clothes, a wild scenery, beautiful and terrifying at the same time.  If you will go up the hill near the church, where father John lives, you would see what the mountain means in its entire splendor. 

With all the beauty of the place, people live hard.  Civilization hasn't really reached there.  The phone and the TV a rarities.  People live just as at the beginning of the century.  Far away from the loose world, religious belief can manifest in its deepest forms.  You are closer to the sky and to God.  But the forces of evil are doing their job better too.  At Posaga, the fight between good and evil is a daily reality.  And the one who sits in the middle of it all is the village's priest, father John.

Priest of the order from Mount Athos

He is still young but his name as a confessor and healer is famous all over the country.  He spent a lot of time around great orthodox priests, outstanding figures of the Church, from whom he learned a lot.  Father Argatu and father Arsenie Boca from Fagaras were his role models in his life as a confessor.  He respects exactly the order of the monks from Athos, which requires a clean life, restrain from the bodily pleasures, intense fasting and continuous praying.  For the ones who succeed to lead this rough life, their spiritual force can permit them almost anything.  It gives them power over the devil.  In all of the country there are only four monasteries that shelter monks capable of exorcism: Frasinei, Sihastria, Cernica, and Posaga.   Even at Frasinei no one is doing such services, because father Ghelasie left for the Sacred Mountain.  Father John continues his work.

War with the evil spirits

Once you entered the village, your steps will be directed toward the church.  Small, barely seen, with nothing special from other churches from the country, but special through the events that take place here.  When I entered, prayers were held in Greek.  At the door, five women were hitting their heads on the walls, yelling, trembling.  Their words resembled Greek, although they could have not known it.  Near the church, a young man in a sleeping bag was crying.  Such a sad cry, so heart rending, as if the whole earth was in tears.  For an uninitiated person it is awful.  You must be strong.  But this was only the beginning.

The evening mass offered indeed the image of the sacred war between God and demons.  Our group of believers from Satu Mare could see everything, behind the benches of the church.  Here were sitting the demonic people, the ones who came to relieve themselves through freeing prayers.  Young people, mostly women, some you could have met before the service and think they are absolutely normal.  But when the mass would start, they would start as well.  It is said that the devil gets a hold especially of the souls with heavy sins (abortions, debauchery, and blasphemies).  They act terribly.  Cries, howling, thick voices, swearing of God and all the saints.  Some of them were rushing to beat up the priest.  Convulsions, hitting, jumping, self-mutilations that no normal human being would even try to simulate.  Three sturdy people could not hold them.  Many times their roars would cover the service.  And everything would reach a climax when father John would get close to the group and read the prayers.  Hell on earth.  It is very hard to describe.  Some were trembling, some were vomiting, others were yelling (from one young woman it was heard a thick voice: "I won't let her! I won't let her until I kill her!").  You could hardly resist such scenes.  "Look and see the frailness of the body!" said the father.

At the morning mass would come more and more sick people, some could not even sit, others were roaring and blaspheming, others were taken outside in the courtyard.  While in the church the service was going on, from outside there were heard fierce yelling, terrible as if an entire legion of demons were besieging the small country church.  There are sick people coming from all over the country, and there were cases form Satu Mare as well.  Many go through terrible tortures until they succeed, to finally free themselves.  The priests read and prayed over them for a whole night.  After staying two days at Posaga and see what is going on, no logic can demonstrate to you the Devil does not exist.  One remains shaken, marked, and in some way fortified in one's belief.

Miracles, healing, conversions, foundations

It is a terrifying spectacle, but the spiritual phenomenon at the center of which is father John is much bigger.  Here take place numerous healings.  Paralytics, people in wheel chairs, all kind of diseases fly away through faith and deep praying. Under the impressions of what is seen and heard here, many people of different religions convert to Orthodoxy.  At Posaga the canons and the rituals of the church are followed exactly, everything is done thoroughly.  Before God's work, man remains without arguments. 

Father John built a monastery at the foot of the mountain, a splendid monastically complex, all in white.  All done in only six months, it is a true miracle.  "Even I don't know with what money I made it.  It was built out of almost nothing", he said.  At the sanctification of the new church, a big cross was seen in the sky - said the ones who were present - and it could be observed on a radius of twenty kilometers.  For this foundation worthy of the times of Stephen the Great^[3], Bishop Andrei Andeicut conferred the father the title of iconom stavrofor^[4], with the right of wearing the cross.  At not even 36 years old.  The wonder is even greater since the little church from the village, the one where so many healings and exorcisms took place, burnt last November, of a criminal hand it seems (two men and a woman).  The villagers say it is the hand of the Devil.  It would follow the logic of things.

Returning to faith

The father receives the believers in the little house on the hill where he has a little farmstead.  He listens to their problems and gives them advice, spiritual "medicine" that helps.  I talked with many residents of Satu Mare who have been there.  The ones, who followed the received advice, confessed they fell better.  It is nothing special or, God forbid a new doctrine.  No.  It is the known Christian belief, simple and applied in everyone's life.  All of his recommendations start with a well-done confession, which would bring reconciliation with God.  Then fasting and intense praying, which can create miracles.  Known and over-known things but practiced too little now days.  Father John tries to impose them to the ones that come seeking help and who he receives voluntarily, although he can be terribly tired after the physical and especially spiritual effort asked of him in the fight with the evil spirits.  The ones, as he says, that attack more often the man of our days, helter-skelter spiritually with the many problems of life and of the sin that always hit him in hidden ways.  In a rushed world, going it seems toward the abyss, at Posaga, this small and insignificant village, there are wonders.  Many people of Satu Mare have been, have seen, have lived events hard to forget.  Among the tall mountains and its people, father John continues his work….    

Translation from "Universul Ziar Popular" Ziar Popular", Romanian newspaper, February 2000.