By James Morrison
Published September 30, 2005
Return to Romania
"The old dictator must be turning over in his grave," David Funderburk said, as he relished the irony of returning to Romania to help dedicate a church in the hometown of Nicolae Ceausescu.
As the U.S. ambassador in Romania in the 1980s, Mr. Funderburk said he was Mr. Ceausescu's "number-one American enemy" for his outspoken criticism of the Romania leader, who was executed in an anti-communist uprising in 1989.
Mr. Funderburk departs for Romania next week to help open a Baptist church in the village of Scornicesti , where Mr. Ceausescu was born in 1919.
"Even though I have visited Romania several times since my ambassadorship and the fall of Ceausescu, it is especially meaningful for me to return under a new democratic government," Mr. Funderburk said in e-mail to Embassy Row.
"And I am particularly pleased to return to my second home of Romania to help inaugurate a church in Ceausescu's hometown and to encourage the government to pass religious laws providing equal freedoms for all religions."
Mr. Funderburk noted that during his service in Romania , Mr. Ceausescu unleashed a fierce crackdown on religion.
"With the communist regime having stripped many Romanians of their religious faith and with the pressures of secularism and materialism coming from integration into Europe , it is a critical moment to reflect on the need for a restoration of religious and spiritual belief in Romania ," he said.
Romanian Ambassador Sorin Ducaru said yesterday that Mr. Funderburk is remembered in his country for his denunciation of Mr. Ceausescu's brutality at a time when most Western leaders viewed him as independent from the Soviet Union and overlooked his human rights abuses.
"He was ambassador when the regime was at its worst," Mr. Ducaru said, adding that Mr. Funderburk is "well-respected in Romania ."
Mr. Ducaru, who noted that Mr. Ceausescu outlawed the Baptist faith, also appreciated the irony of a Baptist church in the dictator's birthplace.
"It is a historical reparation," he said.