Miron Cristea

Romanian cleric and politician. He was educated in the seminaries of the Romanian Orthodox Church and completed his studies at the University of Budapest in 1895 before beginning his work in the ordained ministry. After much dispute in 1910 between the church and emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, he was successfully named Bishop of Caransebes. He supported the unification of Romania and Transylvania at the end of World War I and was named Metropolitan-Primate, 1919, and Patriarch of Romania in 1925, primarily working to bring peace and stability to the church and to regional governments. When King Carol II of Romania dismissed the government in 1938 in an effort to bring unity against the Iron Guard, Cristea was named Prime Minister. His government, however, was primarily seen as a "puppet" of the king, and although he did manage to initially curb anti-Semitic violence he failed to protect the Jewish population from loosing their Romanian citizenship and eventually encouraged