Suspended Judgment

For weeks protesting Jewish youths and rabbis have pressured the National Council of Churches to oust Archbishop Valerian Trifa, head of the Rumanian Orthodox Episcopate of America, from its governing board. The problem: Trifa, 62, stands accused of having incited mobs that murdered hundreds of Jews in Rumania in 1941.

The matter was complicated, since the National Council cannot tell member churches who their delegates should be. Moreover, council leaders rightly feel Trifa should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The U.S. Attorney in Detroit charged last year that in a 1957 naturalization hearing, Trifa falsely denied participating in Rumania's Nazi-lining "Iron Guard." That suit, still pending, ultimately could cost Trifa his citizenship.

At a hastily called emergency meeting in Chicago Oct. 30, the Council Executive Committee took an unprecedented step. Declaring that "we cannot allow any doubt about a complete repudiation" of the atrocities of the Nazi era, they called upon the Orthodox Church in America, parent body of Trifa's Rumanian churches, to ask Trifa to suspend his National Council activities until the federal courts, and an investigation by the Orthodox Church, settle the case.

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