Charity worker listed as secret agent

By ALISON HORWOOD

A Wellington charity worker who delivers meals-on-wheels and visits the sick in hospital has been named as a spy for one of the most feared Iron Curtain secret services during the Cold War.

Elena Speranta, aged 57, appears on a list published in several major newspapers in Romania and Germany of 26 people who spied for the Romanian security agency, the Securitate.

Peeking from behind heavy blinds in her Newtown home, Mrs Speranta told the Weekend Herald the spy allegations were "rubbish."

When shown the list, she said it was nothing but propaganda.

"I don't believe people can be this nasty when we have worked so hard for the community."

Also on the list is Mrs Speranta's husband, Gheorghe, a Romanian Orthodox priest who died of heart failure two years ago.

The articles say the couple worked for the dreaded secret police of fallen communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu, and were sent abroad to gather information on Romanians who had fled their homeland.

The lists, obtained and translated by the Weekend Herald, also give the address of the church Father Speranta presided over for more than 20 years, St Mary's in Berhampore, Wellington.

Father Speranta, who trained at the Theological Institute in Bucharest, was the first Romanian priest officially to take up a post outside his homeland.

The Sperantas arrived in New Zealand with their two sons in 1974.

The sons are now in Europe and the United States, but Mrs Speranta still lives in the Newtown bungalow she and her husband bought 25 years ago, tending her roses and doing charity work.

The close-knit Romanian community says she is still active in the Church - delivering holy water to people in the parish, transporting meals-on-wheels and visiting the sick in hospital.

But immigrants say it was well known that the Sperantas reported to Romania's communist Government.

"We all knew it, but most people turned a blind eye," said one.

"It was common for priests from communist countries to act as spies because of the power of the confessional in the Church."

The Speranta name was first published soon after Ceausescu was executed by firing squad in 1989, but the New Zealand connection surfaced this week in the Wellington District Court.

A Romanian man, Neculae (George) Curea, who has campaigned for 15 years to reveal the pair as secret police agents, was fined $100 and costs after admitting making abusive phone calls to their house last year.

Despite the revelation in court, it was not followed up by police.

Police national headquarters said police prosecuted Mr Curea for misuse of a telephone, but did not involve Interpol or take his spy claims further.

Mr Curea came to New Zealand as a stowaway on a ship in 1982 and was granted residency in 1986.

The Romanian Embassy in Australia, which also handles New Zealand affairs, confirmed last night that it was possible the Sperantas could have been spies.

Third secretary Cristian Brasoveanu told the Weekend Herald: "The allegations may be possible, but I don't see the relevance now - the communist Government and secret police regime fell 10 years ago."

The newspaper articles, translated from Romanian and published between 1990 and 1996, say: "The following is a list of Securitate spies of the West, both in embassies and in churches, who are still carrying out missions in the National Salvation Front Government."

They say that until the revolution of 1989, "spies" - who were often heads of the Orthodox Church and often recruited from religious academies in Bucharest - were sent to the West to watch over Romanians who had fled their homeland.

"In many cases, the Securitate gathered information via the sacrament of confession," the articles say.

The communist regime in Romania largely ended with the revolution in 1989 and the execution of Ceausescu after a 24-year reign in which his economic policies and rush to industrialise turned Romania from one of Europe's richest agricultural areas to one of its poorest states.