days later, he was installed in the episcopal chair at the Curtea de Argeș Cathedral; he remained there for two years. In 1923 he moved to Bălți as bishop of Hotin, where he remained until 1935. The political situation in Romania in the late 1920s and early 1930s was marked by the rise of a fascist movement known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael. The Legion was founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as a breakaway group from A. C. Cuza's far-right antisemitic party called the National-Christian Defense League. Throughout the late 1920s and the early 1930s, the Legion steadily increased its membership among students, peasants, workers and tradesmen, but also among priests. The term "Iron Guard", often used nowadays as an alternative name for the Legion, only appeared in 1930 and originally designated the paramilitary branch of the organization. In 1935, Puiu appointed Archimandrite Antim Nica exarch in charge of the monasteries in his Bishopric of Hotin. In the following years, under Puiu's influence, Nica would become a member of the Iron Guard and a teaching assistant of Iuliu Scriban. Scriban, Nica and Puiu would all three be involved in the future Romanian Orthodox Mission in Transnistria. Metropolitan of Bukovina Following the death of Nectarie Cotlarciuc, Visarion Puiu was elected Archbishop of Cernăuți (Chernivtsi) and Metropolitan of Bukovina on 17 October 1935. He was enthroned on 10 November, thus taking charge of a very wealthy metropolis. Prior to his appointment, the various assets were under secular management and no discrimination based on ethnicity was practiced. Under Puiu's leadership, however, contracts with businesses owned by Jews were terminated. He also started restricting the employment of ethnically non-Romanian individuals. The first press article supporting such policies of discrimination published in a periodical of the Bukovina Metropolis also appeared just weeks after Puiu's enthronement. Puiu tended to refrain from explicit, public, political statements. He allowed antisemitic articles to be published in the Romanian Orthodox Church's periodicals in Bukovina and would do the same later-on in Transnistria, but the only time he penned a political text himself was in September 1936, in Cuvântul preoțesc ("The Priestly Word"), when he published The Church Facing the Communist Danger. Puiu's article endorsed the thesis of Judeo-Bolshevism and attacked other Christian denominations. One paragraph read: "It is very true that the majority of the xommunists are alien to our people, mainly Yids, but it is