Nicolae Bălan

Nicolae Bălan (Romanian pronunciation: [nikoˈla.e bəˈlan]; April 27, 1882 – August 6, 1955) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian cleric, a metropolitan bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The son of a priest, he graduated from Czernowitz University and taught theology at Sibiu from 1905 to 1920. That year, he became Metropolitan of Transylvania, an office he would hold for the rest of his life. In the 1930s, he was an open supporter of the Iron Guard. In 1942, during the Holocaust, he intervened in Bucharest against the planned deportation of Romanian Jews from the Regat, Southern Transylvania and the Banat to the Nazi extermination camps. In 1948, after a communist regime was established, he publicly assisted the new authorities in their effort to disband the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church.