Three children of a Romanian evangelical family are buried in Spain amid great sorrow after a car crash

On 3 August, several hundred people accompanied the parents of a young evangelical family of Romanian origin to the funeral of their three children, who lost their lives in a tragic car crash the previous Sunday.

Bogdan and Noemí Troia are from Romania, but had been living in Spain for many years, where they met and married. They worked in the agricultural sector. They were committed Christians, as shown by their posts on social media, and were part of the Romanian Christian community in the small town where they lived, Villanueva de la Jara. They attended the Betania evangelical church.

On 27 July, another car with four people inside failed to overtake safely, invaded their lane on the N-310 national road and collided head-on with the young family's vehicle.

Rebeca, aged 4, Saúl, aged 2, and Emanuel, aged 8 months, died, and their parents were taken to the nearest hospital with serious injuries. The father was in intensive care and underwent two surgeries.

The town council of Villanueva de la Jara expressed its shock and declared three days of mourning.

The funeral

In a report on the funeral, evangelical pastor Jaume Torrado, who oversees the Federation of Churches of God in Spain (FIDE), which has a small church in the municipality, described the intense pain that accompanied the burial of the three children.

“Bogdan and Noemí asked to be present, in wheelchairs, with broken legs and arms, with metal pins holding their bones together and ice packs to reduce the physical pain that was nothing compared to the pain in their hearts”, he explained.

“The children’s bodies were restored in Zaragoza and brought back yesterday for the wake, and today their bodies were present at the funeral. They looked beautiful. A family united but torn apart by grief, parents trying to cling to the bodies of their children with heart-rending cries”.

Members of many churches in the region and elsewhere, both Spanish and Romanian, attended the service.

Members of various evangelical churches brought messages and music.

“The ceremony concluded with a walk behind the three hearses to the cemetery, where the bodies were buried, the three together, and as the coffins were lowered, a white dove was released, and the fathers pronounced the names of their children”.

The ceremony was very emotionally difficult, and it was an opportunity to demonstrate in practice that Christians are called to “weep with those who weep”, added Torrado, and that it will be very necessary to continue “accompanying and praying’”for the entire Troia family, “who, although they miraculously saved their lives, must now learn to live without their children and find comfort and strength in Jesus Christ”.

In recent days, several initiatives have been launched to raise financial and legal support for the parents.