and left without windows, with cracked walls and holes in their roofs, and with the objects inside scattered and partly lost. He brought these buildings back into a well-functioning state, including the diocesan candle factory, which had almost ceased its activity during the war. At the same time, he hired young, virtuous monks to serve at the cathedral, naming the Archimandrite Fr. Teoctist Arăpaşu to the post of ecclesiarch. A severe drought in 1946–47 affected Moldavia, adding to the misery left by the war. Metropolitan Justinian permitted the first procession featuring the coffin containing the relics of Saint Parascheva, kept at Iaşi since then. The relics wended their way through the drought-deserted villages of Iaşi, Vaslui, Roman, Bacău, Putna, Neamţ, Baia and Botoşani Counties. The offerings collected on this occasion were distributed, based on Metropolitan Justinian's decisions, to orphans, widows, invalids, school cafeterias, churches under construction, and to monasteries in order to feed the sick, and old or feeble monks. On February 27, 1948, Patriarch Nicodim died at the age of 83 under conditions viewed as suspect by some historians. He left vacant the seat of Archbishop of Bucharest, Metropolitan of Ungro-Vlachia, Patriarch of All Romania. To head the church in these uncertain times, a man was sought who had a lucid and penetrating mind, an organising spirit, and who was young, sufficiently energetic to defend the Church from the attempts of the Communist regime to dismantle it. Elected Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church The Great Ecclesiastical Electoral College, meeting in Bucharest on May 24, 1948, elected Justinian Marina Archbishop of Bucharest, Metropolitan of Ungro-Vlachia, Patriarch of All Romania. A statement of the Synod said that he had "shown himself worthy through his devotion to Orthodoxy, through his tireless ministry work until now, through a fruitful labour on behalf of the people and the Church, through a rather well-known parental tenderness, showing through the fulfillment of all the tasks and duties which he was assigned an unflappable obedience toward the Holy Synod and the laws of the country". On June 6, 1948, at the investiture ceremony in the hall of the Palace of the Parliament and the installation ceremony in St. Spiridon the New Church, Bucharest, Patriarch Justinian presented the agenda of his patriarchate. Among his objectives were: to prepare the clergy in the spirit of Orthodoxy and of the demands of the times; to restore Romanian monasticism; to