Petru Gherghel

Petru Gherghel is a Romanian prelate of the Catholic Church, serving as the Bishop of Iași from 1990 to 2019. Born into a Catholic family in Western Moldavia, he identifies as an ethnic Romanian and has carried out public debates with those who see all or most Moldavian Catholics as "Csángós" or Hungarians; he is sometimes polemically depicted as a self-denying Csángó, but rejects the label altogether. His ordination and initial activity took place under the communist regime, when the Church was semi-repressed and the diocese was run by four successive ordinaries. During the regime's national-communist phase, marked by Nicolae Ceaușescu's ascendancy as communist leader, the Holy See was afforded more recognition. From 1978, the Church could appoint apostolic administrators, with Gherghel serving as such, at Iași, down to 1990. His views on the Csángó issue controversially aligned with Ceaușescu's; as a high-ranking clergyman, he was also automatically assigned to the national leadership of the Front of Socialist Unity and Democracy—where he endorsed the official discourse about world peace. Such positions required a degree of cooperation with the authorities, leading him to be criticized by Eduard Ferenț, the more outspokenly anti-communist priest.