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Constantin AlecseMinutes of the Parish Council Emergency Meeting of June 13, 2021
Upon receiving the letter from the ROEA’s Chancellor Mr. David Oancea, dated June 9, 2021, electronically sent to Fr. Constantin Alecse (parish priest) and the members of the Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church, an emergency meeting of the Parish Council was called to order on Sunday, June 13, 2021, at the end of the Church Services. The meeting, held in the Church, started at 1:00 pm. The Invocation prayer The Chair, Mr. Marian Serban, invited the parish priest to lead us in the invocation prayer. The Roll-Call At the roll-call a total number of 20 members answered “present” by signing on the LIST (roll-call attached). So quorum being met, the president declared the meeting as constitutionally in order. Approval of the Agenda After the proposed printed agenda was distributed to all members, the president asked for a motion to accept the agenda. Sabina Popescu made the motion, seconded by Daniela Saffary. All members voted unanimously. In order to make sure that everyone could follow the agenda point by point, the president ordered all the printed materials pertaining to the meeting be distributed to all participant members. Thus, the following materials were distributed:
After the distribution of the above stated materials, the Chair invited Fr. Constantin Alecse to make his presentation. PART I - The Parish Priest Introduction and a Summary Presentation of theReport given to the Episcopate Council Zoom meeting of May 13, 2021Fr. Alecse asked for everyone’s patience, as he intended to thoroughly cover a few main points in order to bring some of the newer members up to speed with the events regarding Mr. Vahab from 15 years ago and up to the present, as well as informing everyone as to what had transpired with the Episcopate within the past month. Before he started his presentation proper, Fr. Constantin stated that as of the end of 2021, HTROC will have, in savings and endowment accounts, over $ 2 Million, with free electricity, generated by the paid-off solar panels, and no liens and/or encumbrances. At the end of Father’s presentation, he asked if there were any questions. Although the older members were already aware of it, some of the newer members wanted to know more about the St. Ana project in Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego. Father explained the nature of the project, the connection it had with the Vahab investment and also how His Eminence Archbishop Nathaniel had been eager to present it to Episcopate Council, but which Fr Constantin did not agree with, as he considered it too early, since the project was only in the preliminary planning stages at that time. After everyone had been brought up to speed with regard to the events in question in the presentation, the discussion turned to the present status of the Sunland Property. Although it had originally been intended as an agenda item for a meeting after the close of the Fanous’ probate (and the bequest funds had become fully available), it was deliberated and decided that, in light of current events, it would be best for the Parish Council to have an official position on the matter. The discussion began in earnest, starting with the viability of purchasing back the property from Mr. Boghossian, and what to do with it from there. Eventually, the discussion moved on to some unofficial estimates of what the present construction costs could be. Mr. Ciceu pointed out that if the utilities had not yet been connected, or the site graded, it was not worth it in his opinion, as those were extremely expensive and difficult undertakings. Mr. Eduard Rastian pointed out that with inflation so high in the United States, and expected to remain high for at least the next several years, building materials would likely cost twice or three times more than usual. A few more similar points were made along the same lines. The deliberations then turned to what to make of the Episcopate’s letter, and how to respond to it. PART II - ROEA’s Letter & Document Request from May 9th 2021…(deadline: June 30, 2021)Deliberations regarding the motives of the ROEA’s actions.The main question that seemed to be on everyone’s mind with regard to the ROEA letter was Why now? What had recently happened that had triggered this inquiry? Since Fr. Alecse had already stated in his presentation that there had been a line of questioning in the Zoom meeting that had focused on the Fanous’ bequest, several members followed up on this point and asked Father to further elaborate. Father confirmed that this line of questioning had indeed occurred during the Zoom meeting, and that it had seemed somewhat unusual to him because some of the questions seemed off-topic, and had strayed far from the original matters of the Sunland property and the Vahab investment. Fr. Constantin explained how Fr. Ian Pacurar, who was the spokesman for the Episcopate Council, had spent a significant amount of time asking Father various questions about the bequest, such as: Would Father receive any financial gain? How much was he getting? Did the parish authorize this gift? Which general assembly approved such a gift? How many people had attended that general assembly? How was Fr. Alecse able to discern Mrs. Fanous’ intent in leaving her property to the church? etc. Father also confirmed that he had been asked about the bequest in two separate phone conversations that had lead up to and proceeded the Zoom meeting; one with the Archbishop himself, and the second with David Oancea. When Antoaneta Rastian asked how the Episcopate would have learned about the bequest, Father answered that the information had been included in the usual yearly reports that were sent out to ROEA in February-March, as well as printed in the parish magazine, the Easter Edition 2021. At this point, the general sense among the members was that the Fanous’ bequest probably had something to do with the timing of the Episcopate’s letter, but the Episcopate’s intent in sending the letter was still unclear. When questioned about the Episcopate’s possible intent, Fr. Alecse said he had no information on that topic, because they hadn’t shared anything with him, but that he had reached out to his own sources and acquaintances in the Episcopate. Father stressed that this was only preliminary, unverified information, but he had heard that Fr. Avramescu from Tustin, CA was being forced to retire on July 1st , and that the same was happening to Fr. Ioan Mihut of Warren, Michigan, who was being forced to retire on August 1st. Father thought that it was possible that Archbishop Nathaniel was clearing the old guard priests to make way for the new Auxiliary Bishop Andrei and his new guard, and that the significant sum of money from the Fanous’ bequest could have made the HTROC a prized appointment. This new information caused quite a stir amongst the members. Some, like Claudia Pugna, were simply shocked to hear that Fr. Avramescu (who was well-known and well-liked), was being forced out in such short order. Others were starting to become angry as they considered that the Episcopate might be using an inquiry to dredge up an old matter from 15 years ago, with the real ultimate aim of eventually replacing the priest. There were several similar outbursts along these lines. Someone suggested that a strongly-worded letter be written to the Episcopate. Antoaneta Rastian suggested taking up a petition and taking signatures to prevent the appointment of a new priest. At this point, Fr. Alecse called for calm, and reminded everyone that 1.) they were Christians, and angry or not, they had to act in a fitting manner, 2.) these discussions and deliberations were still only just speculations until they heard from the Episcopate itself, and 3.) the Archbishop had the ultimate right to appoint and dismiss priests at his pleasure. The members calmed somewhat and agreed that it was the Archbishop’s right to appoint and dismiss; in particular, Ion Ciceu pointed out that this is how things are done in Romania as well. But the general attitude remained that if this was the case, the parishioners should at least be consulted, and if eventually done, it should still be done in an up-front and open manner, and not try to use some pretext to raise suspicion and stir up trouble in the parish. With this, the deliberations moved on to discuss how the Parish should respond to the Episcopate’s Letter and document request. PART III - Course of action by the Parish Council in response to the ROEA inquiry The very first point raised was by Anatol Rezmeritsa, in which he asked with such short notice, was it even possible to comply with the Episcopate’s document request? The question was posed to Fr. Alecse. Fr. Alecse replied that he thought it would be physically impossible to fully comply with the deadline. In the first place, the overly-broad nature of the request, asking for almost every single financial document going back over 30 years, meant the number of documents requested was likely numbered in the thousands. Secondly, many of them would be pre-internet and pre-digital, and would be in hard copy form that would need to be hand scanned. Thirdly, the 20 days initially given to respond (now only 16 days) included 2 major Feastdays, 3 weekends, and other celebrations like our Church’s Feastday of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the Saturday of the Souls, The Holy Trinity Feastday-Church’s Hram, etc) At this, the anger started rising once again. Getta Jercan suggested that they gave us this impossible deadline on purpose. Mr. Ion Anton suggested that this was a form of harassment and abuse of power/authority from the Episcopate. Sabina Popescu pointed out they wanted every last document so they could go on a fishing expedition and find more issues they could use to cause problems later. Antoaneta Rastian suggested that missing the short deadline would give them the perfect excuse to suspend and replace the priest and bring in someone else. Fr. Alecse called for calm once again, and reminded the members that whether they thought the Episcopate was dealing in good faith or not, the Parish Council still had the obligation to respond to the Episcopate. The debate began on the question of the Parish’s response. The main question had to do with how much voluntary cooperation the Parish should extend to the Episcopate’s letter. In the discussions back and forth, two problems kept surfacing in the discussion. The first issue that the council members had, was, that by this point, they were somewhat skeptical and distrustful of the Episcopate’s intentions, and were unsure how to respond to the letter and document request. The second problem was that there were significant flaws in the letter itself. First of all, somebody pointed out that there was factually incorrect information in the letter, such as the incorrect figure of $500,000 as the loan amount (mentioned in two different places). Mr. Panait Cufuioti brought up the fact that he did not agree with how the letter implied that the Parish had done wrong, and was somehow acknowledging their own wrong-doing in the opening paragraphs. Moreso, Mr. Cufuioti observed, the paragraph in the cover letter: …“You also acknowledged that you, and the parish council were aware that the Episcopate By-Laws require that the sale, transfer, or any other encumbrances of the parish properties requires the approval of the Episcopate Council, but that you and the parish council did not follow the provisions of the By-Laws” is not an insinuation, but a direct accusation… Multiple people pointed out problems with the set of questions #15a, #15b, and #15c. Almost unanimously, the members of the council believed that these, especially #15c: Mariana Cadia pointed out that the note at the end brought with it its own special set of problems; any answers to these questions and information furnished could possibly be used to introduce even more questions, and even more incriminations. He said that the language used in that paragraph was similar to the one used by a debt collector’s letter that states “that any and all information voluntarily provided, would be used to further collect the debt”. Necessity for legal counsel? With regards to the above stated points of how to deal with the request questions and answers, Mariana Cadia suggested that perhaps the church may have to consult an attorney before answering any and all gotcha questions posed by the Episcopate to the priest and to the Parish Council. This kind of action by the Episcopate may affect even the probate process, which may be frozen by the Judge, until any and all disputes between the Episcopate and HTROC are settled. Also may affect all the other activities of the parish. The ROEA’s action may discourage the parishioners to remain members of our church being threatened by ROEA with personal financial responsibilities, or to attend our church services, and thus many may decide to join other Romanian Churches in the area, which are quite a few now, etc. The question coming from many members was what should be done? After many discussions, there was an unanimous consent that at the very minimum the parish should do is to hire legal counsel to give the church and Father advice on how to proceed from this point forward. After prayerful discussions, the Parish Council took the following course of actions: The parish council decided to hire an attorney to provide legal counsel and advice going forward. In the event that the Episcopate would move adversely against HTROC, the council decided to pay a reasonable retainer and one-year’s legal fees up front. The motion was made by Sabina Popescu, seconded by Mariana Cadia. The vote was unanimous. Mr. Marian Serban, made a motion, that in the event a conflict of interest between the Parish’s interests and the Fr. Alecse’s interests would arise, the HTROC would be authorized to hire another attorney, with the idea that one attorney would represent the parish, and the other would represent Fr. Constantin Alecse. This motion was seconded by Eduard Rastian, and the vote was unanimous. Along the same lines, the council decided that in case the Episcopate moved adversely against Fr. Alecse, the Parish would allow him to withdraw his full 15% retirement gift early, before the close of probate. The motion was made by Dora Serban, seconded by Claudia Pugna. The vote was unanimous. Mr. Anton wanted it to be known and entered into the record that he personally, strongly objected to the Episcopate’s behavior in this matter and noted that the vast majority of the community felt similarly, and that they intended to fully support and rally behind the priest. All items on the agenda being addressed, Dora Serban made the motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Getta Jercan. The meeting closed at around 3:15 pm, with the Hymn to the Mother of God, and the final blessing. For and on behalf of the Parish Council, Fr. Constantin Alecse Antoaneta Rastian
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