On Saturday, August 3, from 11 a.m., the consecration ceremony of the Church of Unity, rising from the Bözödújfalus lake, will take place.
On the first weekend of August, at the traditional annual meeting of the residents of the former Bözödúj Village, the finished Church of Togetherness will be inaugurated in the flooded Transylvanian settlement. The municipality of Erdőszentgyörgy and the Bözödújfaluért Egyesület announced in 2017 that they will rebuild the Catholic church that collapsed in 2014 with public donations, which emerged from the water of the lake as a symbol of the communist destruction of the village and that a settlement once stood here under the water.
The need to rebuild the church was formulated already in the year of the collapse. The house of worship, built from public donations, represents all the denominations of the flooded settlement, hence its name. Donations came from many countries, from Canada to Australia, and in addition to donors from Transylvania and the motherland, the municipalities of Maros County and Hungary also supported the plan.
The church will be handed over during an ecumenical service on the first weekend of August. The festive program will begin on Saturday at 11 a.m. with a Roman Catholic mass, which will be celebrated by Archdeacon Péter Arthur and parish priest Vilmos Lackó. A Unitarian service will take place from 12:00 p.m., retired deacon József Szombatfalvi will preach the word. From 12:30 p.m., the gathered can listen to the thoughts of the leaders of the historical churches confirming our belonging to one: István Kovács, the bishop of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church, and Béla Kató, the bishop of the Transylvanian Reformed Church District, will give a ceremonial speech. From 12:45 p.m., Bishop Arthur Péter and bishops István Kovács and Béla Kató will bless the Church of Togetherness. According to the program, from 1:20 p.m., after the festive speeches, the gathered will march together to the memorial park in Bözödújfalus, and from 2:00 p.m., a family visit will begin in the headstone village.
The flooded Roman Catholic church of the former Bözödújfalu collapsed on June 29, 2014. The church tower stood in water three meters deep, about 25 meters from the shore.
The ruins of the church sticking out of the water were visible until 2014 (MTI photo: Tamás Kovács)
In the last years of the Ceaușescu dictatorship, the 625-meter-long and 28-meter-high dam that dammed up the water of the Küsmöd stream near Erdőszentgyörgy began to be built. According to the official position, the lake was created for flood protection purposes at the site of Bözödújfalu, but the church tower protruding from the water has become a symbol of the destruction of the village in Romania. After the system change, in 1994, the reservoir completely swallowed up Bözödújfalu, whose inhabitants had previously been moved to neighboring settlements, and many of them were dispersed throughout the world.
Featured image: Bözödújfaluért Association
