27 February 1879 – The future Metropolitan Visarion Puiu (baptized Victor) was born in Paşcani, county of Iaşi. Studies at the Seminaries of Roman and Iaşi, 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 Galaţi, vicar and director of the Seminary of Galaţi (1909 – 1918), director of the Seminary of Chişinău and exarch of the monasteries of Bessarabia (1918 – 1921). Bishop of Argeş (2921 – 1923), then of Hotin, seated in Bălţi (1923 – 1935), Metropolitan of Bucovina, seated in Cernăuţi (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 (Chişinău, 1919); supervisor of the spiritual cultural life in the eparchies he headed, he was the true “founder” of the Cathedral of Bălţi. He died on 10 August 1964, in Viels-Maison, department of Aisne, in France (buried later on in Paris).