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).