900-year-old Norbertine monastery fights for survival as city attempts property seizure

(Lepanto Institute) — The city of Oradea in Romania has initiated legal proceedings to evict a Norbertine abbot from his monastery, a move that would effectively dismantle a centuries-old monastic community despite the abbot’s official recognition and remuneration by the Romanian state.

As the Norbertine Abbey of Oradea, founded in 1130, approaches its 900^th year anniversary, the local municipality is seeking to illegally evict its abbot and seize its property, effecting the suppression of the monastic community and the secularization of its buildings, in a brazen move not even attempted by the Soviet Union’s communist regime, which governed Romania following the Second World War.

The abbey’s background

The Norbertine Abbey of Oradea, formally titled the Premonstratensian Prepositure of Oradea under the patronage of St. Stephen Protomartyr, is one of the earliest monasteries of the Norbertine Order.

The present-day American Norbertine Abbey of St. Michael’s in Orange, California, traces its roots to the Abbey of Oradea in Romania. The founding fathers of St. Michael’s escaped communist oppression in Hungary in the 1950s, transferring Norbertine life from the Abbey of Csorna in Hungary, itself founded by the Abbey of Oradea in Romania.

The Abbey of Oradea was formally recognized by the Romanian state in 1930. Just prior to this, in 1929, Romania ratified a concordat with the Holy See, which afforded legal protection to ecclesiastical property based not only on registered ownership, but also on lawful possession and exclusive religious use.

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Although the Romanian state unilaterally repudiated the concordat in 1948, the legal position of the Oradea Abbey remained distinctive. Beginning in 1938, amid restrictions on contact with Western religious authorities, Premonstratensian houses in Romania were placed under the administrative supervision of the Orthodox Patriarchate, while retaining their Catholic canonical identity.

In 1947, the Holy See definitively established the seat of the Abbey of Oradea in the monastery now targeted by eviction proceedings. Significantly, in 1948, the Romanian state itself confirmed this arrangement, expressly recognizing the monastery as a religious house with legal standing equivalent to that of Orthodox monasteries.

After the fall of communism, this special status was once again reaffirmed. In 1997, the competent state authority formally confirmed the abbey’s separate legal personality and the monastery’s standing as a recognized religious institution, legally comparable to Orthodox monastic structures.

The Norbertine Order, also known as the Canons Regular of Premontre or the Premonstratensians, founded in 1121 by St. Norbert of Xanten and to which the Abbey of Oradea belongs, is one of the oldest Catholic religious orders in Europe. It is governed by ecclesiastical laws that strictly protect the stability of its monasteries as sacred places dedicated to the worship of God.

The city of Oradea’s actions run directly against the established norms of the order, as well as Romania’s constitutional guarantees of religious autonomy, EU protections of religious liberty, and the Church’s own Canon Law.

The legal dispute

The dispute, now before the Oradea District Court, is formally framed by the Municipality of Oradea as an “eviction for lack of title” against Abbot Anselm Rudolf Fejes, O. Praem., elected in 1999 as lifelong abbot of the Norbertine Abbey of Oradea.

While on paper the case resembles an ordinary civil eviction, in substance it raises far deeper questions about the permissible use of civil procedure against consecrated religious life, despite the protections of law in central Europe.

At the core of the controversy is the legal reclassification of a Catholic religious superior of a monastic community, equal in status to a bishop within Church law. Despite Abbot Fejes being the lawful holder of a recognized ecclesiastical office, residing in his canonical seat – and being the legal representative of a monastery that enjoys juridic personhood under Romanian law – the city of Oradea has moved to evict him from his monastery as a private “occupant without title,” removable through a summary procedure designed for clear-cut tenancy or possession disputes.

Ostensibly, the city is seeking to renovate an adjacent publicly-owned school building using EU funds that require proof of ownership of the entire building. However, the school is adjoined to the Norbertine monastery complex, which has remained in the legal possession of the Norbertine Order for nine centuries and whose legal representative, recognized by Romanian law, is its abbot.

Critics of the city’s actions argue that the framing of the case as a mere tenancy dispute is not neutral but reductive, stripping a religious office of its juridical and spiritual content and recasting it as a mere physical presence subject to administrative control.

Ecclesiastical law on stability of place for an abbot

In the Church’s Code of Canon Law, recognized by the Constitution of Romania, an abbot’s residence in his monastery is not incidental. It flows directly from perpetual monastic vows, which bind to a particular local church, and from the principle of stabilitas loci, stability of place, which binds a life-elected monastic superior to the stable exercise of his office in the canonical house of the community.

In a statement to the court, Abbot Fejes declared:

This case is not a simple tenancy dispute, but the result of an administrative fiction built on an impossible double qualification of the same property: the monastery at no. 14-16 – the canonical seat of the Prepositure of the Canons Regular of Prémontré in Oradea – is, by its nature and by consecutive public acts, a res sacra, extra commercium. It cannot be “reclassified” civilly as a school building or public housing without a valid canonical deconsecration, which has never taken place. In the absence of an act of profanatio (profanation) issued by the competent ecclesiastical authority and of a legitimate translative title, no secular body has the competence to change the use, regime, or possession of a domus religiosa and, a fortiori, to evict its canonical superior bound by stabilitas loci.

For a Norbertine abbot and his monastic community, the monastery itself is not simply lodging; it is the abbot’s proper seat of governance, a consecrated place of prayer, and the designated building structure within which vowed communal religious life is observed according the order’s rule and constitutions. Removing the superior from that place does not merely relocate him – it renders the office itself unworkable in practice and disrupts the integrity of the monastic community and their way of life.

For this reason, the case is widely viewed not as a genuine property dispute but as the use of civil procedure to disrupt consecrated life and effectively suppress a monastery by expelling its superior and seizing its property, without openly acknowledging that aim.

Against such an intrusion, Abbot Fejes affirmed in his statement to the court:

A pontifical canonical residence of the Premonstratensian Prepositure is a res sacra, therefore extra commercium; the Prepositure has public legal personality of pontifical right, recognized by the state through the certificate of the Secretariat of State for Religious Affairs no. 623/FGA of 15.09.1997, being included in the Roman Catholic Church’s structure and subject to periodic confirmation of status, according to law.

My consecration since 1999 and the stabilitas loci obligation of the superior (abbot-prepositus-prelate) require residence in this house, and the Abbot General confirmed on 27.05.2025 (annex p. 210) that my absence may not exceed two months. Without the canonical suppression of the juridical person and without a decretum de profanatione from the competent ecclesiastical authority, no administrative act can transform this sacred good into “public property” or change its purpose; any contrary measure is unlawful and constitutes an interference with the autonomy of the religious denomination.

Impropriety of the eviction procedure

The accelerated eviction procedure sought by the city of Oradea in the case – intended by the law for structurally simple cases with limited legal questions – is not designed to determine the identity of sacred property, the autonomy of a pontifical religious institute, such as a Norbertine monastery, or the lawful competence of civil authorities to alter the use of ecclesiastical goods.

In legal objections before the court, Abbot Fejes argued that when such a procedure is used for these purposes – and produces an immediately enforceable outcome – the result is an irreversible factual situation created before any meaningful judicial examination of the merits can occur.

“This manoeuvre,” the abbot stated, “disguised as a tenancy dispute, is in reality a forced deprivation of the perpetual use (stabilitas boni – stability of the good) of the monastic complex and a disguised secularization of a pontifical residence – a direct attack on the office of praepositus-prelatus (preposit-prelate, abbot-prelate) held ad vitam (for life) and on the institution itself.”

Confirmation of Abbot Fejes’s rights by the government of Romania and ecclesiastical authorities

The tension has been further heightened by the Romanian state’s own long-standing conduct in the matter. For decades, state authorities have recognized the Premonstratensian Prepositure of Oradea as a lawful religious entity and Father Abbot Fejes as its legitimate superior. His election was noted and verified in accordance with domestic law, his office appears in official records, and his position is remunerated from public government funds.

That consistent course of recognition makes it legally problematic for the state, acting through a municipality, to later treat the same person as a tolerated occupant lacking any lawful basis to reside in the monastery. Legal observers describe this as a classic case of acting against one’s own established position.

The monastic property at issue, located at 14–16 Roman Ciorogariu Street in Oradea, was confirmed by the Abbot General of the Norbertine Order, Abbot Jos Wouters, on May 27, 2025, as the canonical seat of the Norbertine Abbey of Oradea, consisting of a church and monastery classified as res sacrae under Canon Law and protected under the Romanian Law on Religious Freedom.

By Romanian law, such property stands outside ordinary civil commerce and cannot be reclassified, alienated, or repurposed without a formal act of ecclesiastical de-consecration. No such act has ever been issued. Nevertheless, the municipality has advanced an administrative narrative that effectively absorbs the monastery into the neighboring public school complex, enabling the use of an expedited eviction mechanism.

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Illegal eviction of an abbot from his monastery causes irreparable harm

Andrea Varga, a Hungarian lay Catholic and legal historian representing Abbot Fejes and the Norbertine Abbey of Oradea before the Romanian court, sharply criticized the city’s actions in comments to the Lepanto Institute.

“This is happening in a European Union and NATO country that claims rule of law credentials and close partnership with the United States,” she stressed, “while the Premonstratensian Order has an international footprint and real connections in the United States as well.”

“That context matters because it removes every excuse,” she said.

This is not a frontier situation where basic standards are unknown. Romania has binding obligations on religious freedom, non discrimination, property, and peaceful enjoyment, fair trial guarantees, and effective remedies. The moment the state allows a summary eviction mechanism to be used as a tool to neutralize a monastic superior, the state is not merely “staying neutral.” It is enabling a targeted outcome while hiding behind the form of ordinary litigation.

Should the sought-for eviction be granted by the court, the potential harm would be inherently irreparable. Were Abbot Fejes removed from his monastery through an immediately enforceable eviction order, no later ruling conceding money damages would restore monastic stabilitas loci.

Assessing the many harms that would be effected by the eviction, Varga warned, “The months of forced rupture, the public scandal, the practical decapitation of community life, the chilling precedent for other religious houses, all of that is damage that has already occurred.”

“This is exactly why the use of such a procedure is so dangerous: it manufactures a fait accompli and then asks the legal system to pretend it can unwind it later,” she said.

Cautioning against the far-reaching effects of the case, Varga further warned:

If this theory “wins,” the precedent is not limited to one monastery. The principle becomes this: a municipality can administratively re-describe a sacred place, deny the ecclesiastical narrative on paper, and then use a fast civil tool to remove the lawful superior as if he were a squatter. Once courts accept that move, any Catholic house, rectory, monastery, or canonical residence becomes vulnerable wherever local political and financial interests are strong enough. The law’s protection of sacred patrimony and ecclesiastical autonomy becomes decorative, something that exists in statutes and speeches while the lived reality can be dismantled through procedural shortcuts.

Condemning Oradea’s attempted eviction of Abbot Fejes as “a discriminatory punishment of consecrated life carried out under the mask of ordinary civil procedure,” Varga called out the case as “the attempt to nullify, in practice, what the state itself previously accepted in law: the identity of the monastic house, the reality of the office, and the legitimacy of stable residence tied to that office until the canonical term recognized by the state.”

The legal historian demanded, “If the state wants to challenge title, identity, or competence, it must do so openly, on the merits, with full guarantees, and with respect for the special legal regime of religious freedom and ecclesiastical autonomy. Anything else is not neutrality. It is complicity in a forced secularization carried out by paperwork.”

Persecution of the Catholic Church in Romania by illegal seizure of property must end

In a further statement to the Lepanto Institute, Varga elaborated on the wider situation of the Church and the Norbertine Order in Romania. According to the legal scholar, the attempt to evict a religious superior when outright confiscation of property proves impossible has become a recognized pattern of government conduct.

Varga stated:

Abbot Fejes is, in practice, the only one who has refused to “hand over” ecclesiastical property to the state, as others unfortunately have done. That refusal is exactly why the pressure has escalated. Since the Romanian state cannot lawfully nationalize a house of worship or a monastic residence outright, the method has been reversed: if direct confiscation is not possible, then eviction is attempted.

This is not only a civil-property dispute. It goes to the very core of Romanian ecclesiastical public law as it has developed within an Orthodox legal context. In Romania, a building that is directly and exclusively dedicated to worship – a sacred good – is not something that the state, nor any public authority, can simply take, expropriate, or convert by administrative maneuver. In practical terms, for such an asset to become “state property” in a lawful way, the cultic destination itself would have to cease, because the legal regime follows the religious purpose.

Romanian law protects precisely this category of ecclesiastical property, including against indirect forms of dispossession. The key norm is the Law on Religious Freedom and the General Regime of Cults, Law no. 489/2006, Art. 27, which provides, in relevant part:

(2) Sacred goods, namely those directly and exclusively dedicated to worship, as established according to the proper statutes of each cult in conformity with its traditions and practices, lawfully acquired, are non-seizable and imprescriptible and may be alienated only under the specific statutory conditions of each cult.
(3) The provisions of para. (2) do not affect the recovery of abusively confiscated sacred goods by the state in the period 1940–1989, nor of those taken without legal title.

In other words, sacred goods are legally protected as non-seizable and non-prescriptible, and they may be alienated only according to the internal law of the cult itself. What the state is forbidden to obtain directly under this lex specialis – an organic law with constitutional relevance in matters of religion – a municipality cannot obtain indirectly by eviction tactics. A local authority cannot do “through the back door” what the law expressly forbids “through the front door.”

This point is decisive here, because the acting authority is not formally the central state but a local municipality. That distinction does not help the case against the Prepositure. In a rule-of-law system, what the state itself cannot lawfully do, no subordinate public authority may accomplish indirectly. An eviction cannot be used as a surrogate for expropriation when expropriation itself is legally impossible.

Given the abbey’s history over the last century, in which it retained special status under law even during the Soviet regime, the legal historian argued that it is impossible that a municipality in Romania today has the right to seize the property of a monastery which enjoys recognized, ecclesiastical status protected by the Romanian Constitution.

The abbey, she insisted, is “not a dissolved or fictional entity.”

It is a living, state-recognized ecclesiastical juridical person, sui iuris, whose status has been continuously acknowledged by the competent state authority for religious affairs. Its superior is recognized as the lawful representative; the house functions openly as an ecclesiastical institution; and its status carries concrete public-law consequences, including recognition within the system of state support accorded to recognized cult structures according to their canonical rank, analogous, in its legal treatment, to Orthodox monastic or exarchal structures.

Against this background, it is incompatible with any conception of a rule-of-law state for a municipality to take a building with an autonomous, recognized ecclesiastical status, register it on its own internal papers in its own name, and then declare the legitimate ecclesiastical superior an “intruder.”

A municipality cannot manufacture title through its own administrative acts and then rely on those same acts to expel a recognized ecclesiastical authority from a religious house.

This is precisely the kind of indirect dispossession that the law of cults exists to prevent.

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For this reason, it is simply not true that “everything belongs to the state now.” Nothing was ever lawfully transferred away from the Premonstratensians. What happened instead is that various public institutions, and at times even private actors, used or occupied these properties, while the legal and canonical continuity of the ecclesiastical entity remained intact. To reduce such a case to a mere land-register or civil-technical dispute is not only misleading; it is a deliberate attempt to neutralize, by indirection, a legal protection that the law explicitly and consciously put in place.

The District Court of Oradea is scheduled to pronounce on the merits of the case this week.

It is hoped that the persecution of the Catholic Church in the form of such “backdoor” maneuvers and the attempt to suppress monastic life in Romania through the eviction of religious superiors and the illegal seizure of Church properties will be quickly rectified and brought to an end, and the rights of the Church upheld in practice, as they are in law.

Below are published several official legal and ecclesiastical documents, with their translations, obtained by the Lepanto Institute and relevant to the case.

Abbot General of the Norbertine Order, Rome, Nov. 21, 2015: Confirmation of the Status of Abbot Fejes

Abbot General of the Norbertine Order, Rome, May 27, 2025: Confirmation of Address of the Abbey of Oradea and Obligation of Residence of Abbot Fejes

Apostolic Nunciature, Romania, June 25, 2020: Confirmation of Status and Property Rights of the Abbey of Oradea

Secretary of State, Romania, Aug, 9, 1997: Confirmation of Legal Status of Norbertine Order

Secretary of State, Romania, Sept. 15, 1997: Confirmation of Address and Legal Status of Abbey of Oradea

Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, Romania, Nov. 14, 2001: Confirmation of Address and Legal Status of Abbey of Oradea

Ministry of Finance, Romania, Dec. 12, 1997: Confirmation of Address and Fiscal Code of the Abbey of Oradea

Secretary of State, Romania, Dec. 23, 2015: Confirmation of Address, Property Rights, and Legal Status of Abbey of Oradea

Reprinted with permission from the Lepanto Institute.