Francis Phillips interviews pro-life doctor Dr Anca-Maria Cernea
During the October Synod on the family I observed the sometimes unedifying spectacle of different pressure groups within the Church jostling to give their own interpretation of what was happening. Then, along with thousands of other Catholics throughout the world, I was inspired by a single (lay) intervention on October 16: the address to the Synod Fathers by Dr Anca-Maria Cernea, representative of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Bucharest, Romania. Here is the link to her speech and here is the link to my blog at the time, written in response to this speech.
What drew me and many others to Dr Cernea’s address was her insistence that the Church is engaged in a spiritual battle in defence of the family, much more than a political or sociological one. Not wanting her insights into the nature of the problems we face to be forgotten, I tracked down Dr Cernea to find out more about her background and the formative influences that led to her remarkable intervention.
Inevitably, the strength of her faith comes in part from the sufferings her family endured under Communism. Her parents were engaged when her father, a brilliant student and Romanian patriot from the Greek Catholic Church, was imprisoned by the Communists in 1947 for his opposition to the regime. He was not released until 1964, 17 years later, when he and his fiancée were at last able to marry. Dr Cernea describes her father’s survival without giving up his beliefs and in spite of being tortured, as a “miracle”. Her maternal grandfather, also from the Greek Catholic Church, was imprisoned for ten years and her mother and grandmother spent several months in prison without trial.

Read it all here:   http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2015/12/15/meet-the-lay-woman-who-shook-up-the-family-synod/