were circulated by liberal Catholic papers in the West, including, in 1924, La Paix. The latter newspaper also gave exposure to Cecan's take on the Immaculate Conception, on which topic he did not "foresee insuperable difficulty". In January 1929, days after executive power had been handed to the National Peasants' Party, Cecan attended the Bessarabian Agronomists' Congress, where he spoke about the need to increase productivity among the smallholders. The National Peasantists' relaxation of censorship laws convinced Cecan that he could return to his work as a publicist, with backing from the Union of the Bessarabian Clergy. Called Raza ("The Ray") or Svet ("Light"), his newspaper drew negative attention from the Siguranța, which intervened to have the Union sack Cecan from his editorial position. Cecan was upset to note that Raza was being republished under new management, and resorted to recounting his version of events in another newspaper he issued for a period, called Khristianskaya Pobeda ("Christian Victory"). In 1931, he and Ioan Știucă revived the newspaper. This again irritated the sensibilities of mainstream Romanian nationalists by continuing to advocate in Russian; as Cecan noted in his rebuttal, there was a practical reason framing this decision: "We are proud that we know Russian almost as well as Romanian; [...] we are proud that we will be able to respond in the same language to mistakes, delusions, fabrications and attacks of the minority [Russian] press". Unpersuaded by such pleading, Metropolitan Gurie obtained that Raza be shut down after its first issue. That October, Cecan still addressed a meeting of the Bessarabian clergy in Russian, causing most of those present to leave the hall in protest. Telegraf and Nazism Cecan's pro-Catholic outlook, including his stance on papal infallibility, were openly criticized by conservative bishops—in particular, by Roman Ciorogariu of Oradea. In his polemic with Bishop Roman, made public in early 1933, Cecan insisted that a unified church would naturally be led by the popes. During that interval, he lamented the decline of Orthodoxy, concluding that: "Our Church no longer wields any influence upon society, upon the institutions of the State, or upon the life of the nation. It neither enlightens nor warms the souls of the faithful." In rendering his verdict, The Tablet saluted Cecan as an "earnest man and acute thinker". The letter to Bishop Roman also included a critique of atheism, which Cecan associated with Masonry, claiming that they acted