Visarion Puiu (; sometimes Bessarion in French; born Victor Puiu on 27 February 1879 in Pașcani, Romania – 10 August 1964 in Paris or Viels-Maisons, France) was a metropolitan bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. During World War II, at a time when Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany, he served as the leading Eastern Orthodox clergyman in occupied Transnistria, a territory where several hundred thousand Jews were murdered. In August 1944, when Romania switched sides, he took refuge in Nazi Germany. After the war, he lived in Italy and Switzerland before finally settling in France. In 1946, he was sentenced to death in absentia by the Bucharest People's Tribunal. He created the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Western Europe under the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, and for a few years played an important role in the Romanian diaspora. The in Bucharest defrocked Puiu in 1950, but posthumously restored him among its clergy in 1990. Puiu's connections to the Iron Guard, as well as his responsibility in the Holocaust, have been the subject of scholarly publications in the post-communist era. Early life and monastic career Victor Puiu was born on 27 February 1879 in Pașcani, Romania. He attended a local primary school before pursuing an education in seminaries in Roman (1893–1896) and Iași (1896–1900). He graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Theology in 1905 and became a monk in Roman on 22 December 1905. He took the monastic name Visarion and was ordained a deacon three days later. From January 1907 to July 1908, he studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, in the Russian Empire. From 1905 to 1908, he was a deacon within the in Roman and in 1908 he transferred to the in Galați. There, on 6 December 1908, he was ordained a priest, being elevated to the dignity of Archimandrite on 1 January 1909. Three months later, he was named director of the Galați Theological Seminary and Vicar of the Archbishopric of the Lower Danube. On 1 September 1918, he became director of the Chișinău Theological Seminary in Bessarabia and, two months later, exarch of the province's monasteries. On 17 March 1921, Puiu was elected Bishop of Argeș. He was consecrated in that position on 25 March by Metropolitan of Wallachia Miron Cristea in the Bucharest Metropolitan Cathedral and invested into the office that day by King Ferdinand. Two