CLAUDIU IONESCU
Past Master, FORUM Lodge No. 64 and AGORA Lodge No.175, Bucharest;
Assistant Grand Master for Foreign Relations, Grand Lodge of Moldova;
Founder & Director, MASONIC FORUM Magazine
“Masonic Forum Magazine is a major player on the international scene and certainly represents a quality that is at least the equal of some of the best that I have seen.” (Thomas Jackson, Executive Secretary of the World Conference of the Grand Lodges)
“Masonic Forum it is, in my humble opinion, one of the best Masonic magazines that I have seen. The content, the design, the layout, the colors, I think it’s quite inspirational and I think this is the way of the future.” (Akram Elias, Past Grand Master of Grand Lodge of Washington DC)
Leaders of world Masonry do me the honour of speaking in such terms regarding the MASONIC FORUM. I founded the magazine in 2000. For Romanian regular Masonry, 14 years already means a tradition. For the United Grand Lodge of England, a tradition goes back almost 300 years. There can be no comparison. England has a global vision, whereas we started with a local vision, looking toward the other structures of regular masonry, abroad, as to older brethren, as being more experienced. And yet we have managed to have our value recognized.
Eugen Ovidiu Chirovici, Past Grand Master of the NGLR (2003-2010), is the one whom we owe a radical change of RomanianMasonry and a connection of it to the requests – whether or not they were confessed – of world Masonry. Because of the converging works of several among us and of some “sacred monsters” of the contemporary Craft, England recognized us in 2009. These “sacred monsters” have accepted membership in the Honorary Editorial Committee of the magazine. The bases of the organization, in 2014, in Bucharest, of the World Conference of Grand Lodges were laid in the same period.
The offer of the Internet is practically unlimited. On the net, one can read rituals, one can watch recordings of the ritual meetings, one can find out about the real history of the Craft, or one can read all sorts of stories, the results of conspiracy theories. These cannot be controlled by anyone. The Internet is free of all censorship.
The UGLE is the creator and the keeper of the traditional Masonic values. In fact, England cannot be compared to any other country, in any domain. I do not say this because I am an Anglophile, but because I know, in some detail, many things that prove that claim. The UGLE has recently expressed the desire that in the MASONIC FORUM there should appear no more photographs taken within the masonic meetings, with the Brethren showing Masonic signs. As founder and editor of the MASONIC FORUM, I will honour their desire. The FORUM promotes Romanian masonry internationally and has therefore always taken into consideration pertinent advice. All the more so as, in order to learn from the UGLE, I became an English Mason in 2010.
