History

Prior to 1989, Romania was one of the most oppressive communist nations in the Eastern Bloc. Dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu drove Europe's thriving breadbasket into poverty by exporting nearly everything of value in order to pay off the country's foreign debt. He also believed population growth would result in economic growth, and consequently outlawed birth control and taxed any family that remained childless. Many families ultimately abandoned these unwanted children right after birth where they remained neglected in hospital wards. In 1989, the Ceausescu regime was overthrown in a short but violent revolution, after which many Western humanitarian-aid groups made known to the world the plight of these throw-away children.

Our founder and president Ray Wright took a trip behind the Iron Curtain to Hungary and Yugoslavia with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship immediately after graduating from Rutgers University in 1987. During his stay at a refugee camp in Yugoslavia, he heard firsthand from Romanian refugees about the persecution and beatings they endured under Stalinist repression. In 1990, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, he took his first exploratory trip to Romania under the auspices of World Challenge. His host family brought him to the town’s hospital, where he discovered some of the children described above. Among them was Cosmina, a six-year-old girl who could not walk or talk, not due to any birth defect or handicap, but rather because no one talked to her or took her from her crib. Her life was wasting away.

After numerous trips to Romania from his base in London, Ray moved to Vienna and eventually to Romania, where he enrolled in language school at the university in Cluj-Napoca. That same year, World Challenge's European director Gary Wilkerson visited and saw firsthand the need and opportunity to rescue these children. He provided funds for the purchase and renovation of a small house in Ocna-Mures. Missionaries Mary Goselin and Caprice Scott moved there to oversee the home and together they were entrusted with five children from the local hospital. This house became Casa Sanctuary, a family-style refuge devoted to caring for abandoned children as a ministry of God’s grace. 

Mary shared with Ray that one morning she was reading Ezekiel in her daily devotional and came across the phrase "yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary" in chapter 11:16. Spurgeon said of this verse: In using the word “little,” the gracious God would seem to say, “I will condescend to them and I will be as they are. I will bow down to their littleness and I will be to each little one of them a little sanctuary.” They agreed to name the ministry "Fundația (Foundation) Sanctuary" and in 1992, they incorporated the region's first non-profit charity. They trained up local leaders and relinquished leadership in 1996. Ray incorporated Sanctuary International Inc, an American non-profit 501(c)3 charitable organization, to represent the ongoing needs of Fundația Sanctuary. Nearly two decades later, a former teammate from the life-changing college trip to Yugoslavia, Gail Anderson, accepted the invitation to join the board of directors of Sanctuary International, and currently serves as vice-president.

Fundația Sanctuary now operates three homes which can accommodate up to 30 children. The foundation employs tireless, loving Romanian staff, who care for the children around the clock.  Over a hundred children have been in their care since inception. The original wave of abandoned children rescued in the 1990s have grown up, graduated, married, and started families of their own. Casa Sanctuary is more than an institution - it is a home where children can grow up secure and loved, as a family. We believe that every child deserves a childhood.

Fundația Sanctuary is a faith-based charity but partners with both religious and secular organizations and donors from around the world.

Our history summarized by World Challenge