.... This will be Daniel second Christmas out on the Bucharest streets. It was either the streets or the orphanage where the older boys used to beat him. With a stoic look outdating his nine years he explains how they used to find humor in closing the door on his fingers. His days today are spent begging for bread. At night he finds warmth under an empty stairwell of a cold bloc apartment building.
Street children are most prevalent at the Bucharest train station. It is here where journalist shot many of the scandalous photographs of these wild eyed youths as young as ten years coming out of their subterranean shelters high on paint solvents.
Tucked away inside a narrow cul-de-sac just a few blocks from the station is Catholic Charities St. John�s house. Behind the stone walls of this unobtrusive little house resides a unique family of 11 former street children.....
... Seven spirited children suddenly burst through the entrance doors. It is noon and they are returning from school for their lunch. Seeing a visitor in the house brings them added excitement and they are quick to crowd around and greet the new face with hugs and kisses. They wish to show their pleasure through song and immediatly line up like a chorus with the tallest in the back. Led by the angelic voice of 12 year old Luminitsa they perform a medly of Christmas songs until broken up by the house mother who cries out from the dining room, "come and get it!"
Catholic Planet Magazine 12/01
Roxana House
�For us things are not necessarily better now than they were during communism,� says Adrian Coman, director of the Romanian gay and lesbian organization ACCEPT.
............ Arousing Romania�s homophobic sentiment has been a biased media which has been criticized for editorializing gays along with criminals and pedophiles and as Adrian Coman points out, �continuing the Romanian mentality that homosexuality is a disease that comes from the West.�
Col. Tudor Butoi, a psychologist in the Bucharest Municipal Police, heralded by journalists as �a specialist in Romania on homosexual behavior� states that, �Homosexuality, like prostitution, is the factor which germinates theft, vagabondage, and crime.�
Meanwhile, anti-gay laws forbidding homosexual propaganda and proselytizing has muffled the gay community from speaking out against their critics.
�Our organization is legal but our activities are illegal�, says Adrian Coman. �We have not yet been bothered but we have no guarantee that we will not be harassed, shut down or arrested. Tomorrow is another day.�
...�At the beginnings there was a little problem getting the kindergarten started because the parents worried that we would take their children and sell them,� says Marius Hodea, Director of Catholic Charities Brezoi, �but after that we were very quickly accepted, even curiously.�
.... When asked about how they will celebrate the Gypsy holiday Mr. Hodea grins, �I don�t think the people of Valea Lui Stan have absolutely any idea of this.�
National Catholic Register 4/02.
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