27 February 1879 – The future Metropolitan Visarion Puiu (baptized Victor) was born in Pașcani, county of Iași

27

February 1879 – The future Metropolitan Visarion Puiu (baptized Victor)

was born in Pașcani, county of Iași. Studies at the Seminaries of Roman

and Iași, at the Faculty of Theology of Bucharest (1900 – 1904) and at

the Spiritual Academy of Kiev. Tonsured into monasticism in 1905 and

ordained hierodeacon for the Episcopal Cathedrals in Roman and Galați,

vicar and director of the Seminary of Galați (1909 – 1918), director of

the Seminary of Chișinău and exarch of the monasteries of Bessarabia

(1918 – 1921). Bishop of Argeș (2921 – 1923), then of Hotin, seated in

Bălți (1923 – 1935), Metropolitan of Bucovina, seated in Cernăuți (1935 –

1940), dignity from which he retired in May 1940, then Metropolitan of

Transnistria, seated in Odessa (1942 – 1943). In August 1944, he left

for the West of Europe, where he remained till his death (Austria,

Italy, Switzerland, and since 1949 in Paris), where he headed a Romanian

eparchy for Western Europe till 1958. On 21 February 1946, “The Trial

of the People” of Bucharest sentenced him to death “in absentia”. Under

the pressure of the communist authorities, the Holy Synod of the

Romanian Orthodox Church had to depose him from his dignity in 1950; he

was rehabilitated in 1990, after the fall of the communist regime. He

wrote many works for guiding the priests, volumes of sermons, a

monograph on the Monasteries of Bessarabia (Chișinău, 1919); supervisor

of the spiritual cultural life in the eparchies he headed, he was the

true “founder” of the Cathedral of Bălți. He died on 10 August 1964, in

Viels-Maison, department of Aisne, in France (buried later on in Paris).

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