Valerian Trifa

Valerian Trifa (; secular name Viorel Donise Trifa ; June 28, 1914 – January 28, 1987) was a Romanian Orthodox cleric who served as an archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America. He was accused of being a fascist political activist and sympathizer, which led to his voluntary exile.

An early member of the Iron Guard, Trifa played a part in provoking the Legionnaires' Rebellion of 1941. His antisemitic discourse was alleged to have helped instigate the pogrom against the Jewish community in Bucharest. After being accused as a rebel by Ion Antonescu, he spent the final years of World War II detained in Nazi Germany. Trifa eventually made his way to the United States in 1950, where he was ordained as a bishop of the Romanian-American Orthodox community into opposition with the main Orthodox Church in Communist Romania.

In 1975, his wartime activities came to the attention of the United States Department of Justice. Trifa, to avoid drawing negative attention to the episcopate, renounced his American citizenship sometime between 1980 and 1984. He moved to Portugal in 1982 on a temporary visa; he was denied residency in 1984, but remained there until his death in 1987.

Biography

Early life and activism Born in Câmpeni, Transylvania (at the time in Austria-Hungary, now in Alba County, Romania), he was the son of schoolteacher Dionisie Trifa, and the nephew of Iosif Trifa, an Orthodox priest who founded Oastea Domnului ("The Lord's Army"). He studied at the school of his native village, then at the Horia Gymnasium of Câmpeni and the Gheorghe Lazăr High School of Sibiu, from which he graduated in 1931.

Legionnaires' Rebellion and the Bucharest pogrom Although hostile to the Guard's new leader, Horia Sima, These statements included arguments such as "A group of Jews and Jew-lovers are ruling everything".

After Trifa was freed, he was briefly secretary to Metropolitan bishop Visarion Puiu in Vienna and then Paris, and, following the end of World War II, he was a professor of ancient history in Italy, at a Roman Catholic college.

He was subsequently a writer at the Solia Romanian language newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. At the Congress of the dissident Romanian Orthodox Church in America held in Chicago on July 2, 1951, Trifa was consecrated as a bishop and was moved to Grass Lake, Michigan, where the headquarters of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate is located. Ten years later, he became an archbishop.

Department of Justice investigation Investigation into his past had started as early as 1957, but it wasn't until 1975 that the United States Department of Justice began investigating Trifa under the pretenses that he entered the United States by hiding his involvement with the Iron Guard. The archbishop was ousted from the body in November, after the Council stated that, in what concerns Nazi atrocities, "we cannot allow any doubt about a complete repudiation".

The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) of the U.S. Justice Department was established in 1979 for the purpose of expelling Nazi war criminals that had entered the U.S. OSI prosecuted Trifa with the intention of stripping him of his U.S citizenship and deporting him. The trial began in October 1982. Trifa wanted to avoid being returned to Romania, where he had been convicted in absentia in 1941 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He agreed to settle the case, acknowledging that he had been a member of the Iron Guard and had concealed this information when he entered the U.S. He agreed to leave the U.S. within 60 days after receiving permission to enter another country.

Israeli prosecutor Gideon Hausner pressured for the extradition of Trifa so that Israel could try him for crimes against humanity, but the Israeli government never made any official extradition claim or issued any warrants. Initially, they allowed the prelate three months to leave the country's territory. Trifa however died before the appeal could come to a decision during emergency treatment for a heart attack. Pacepa linked this to a trip by Romanian bishop Bartolomeu Anania to the United States, of which he claimed was a common attempt of the regime and the main Orthodox Church to quell the dissidence of Romanian-American Orthodox believers. In 2003, Noël Bernard's wife, , noted that her husband was being targeted by the Securitate, and argued that the communist institution attempted to stir up animosity inside Radio Free Europe in order to have Bernard stripped of his position. She also described Bernard's mysterious 1981 death as an assassination, arguing that it formed the culmination of various failed attempts to silence him.

Trifa's involvement in the Iron Guard affected several institutions, including the National Council of Churches, Radio Free Europe, West German law enforcement, and the Israeli and Portuguese governments, while allegations surfaced that Romania's secret police, the Securitate, was using the controversy to advance its own goals. Trifa was cited among the suspected war criminals who may have been actively aided by the Roman Catholic Church in avoiding investigation, suggesting that the frequency of such cases could help explain why Italy had been resisting the ratification needed for opening the International Tracing Service archives managed by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bad Arolsen.