Finance Minister Marcel Bolosh said in an interview with Digi24.ro on Wednesday that he has additional responsibility for other ministers and that he chooses the church over political life.

“I have an additional responsibility to them and I have to decide between church life and party life, and for now I prefer the church,” he added. The minister also added that he is a missionary priest and wants to remain so.

Marcel Bolosh told Newsweek Romania that before the revolution he was not admitted to the Theological Institute. “Archdeacon Khuedin made a negative file for me. My parents were party members, simple people, worked in SAP. I was given negative approval on the grounds that I was a threat to the church. And, thus, I did not take the theology exam anymore,” said the minister.

Bolosh became a missionary priest a quarter of a century later, at the age of 40.

“I grew up in the church yard. I had a Christian upbringing, which I am not ashamed of,” he says.