Thus, the attempt unfolded on two levels:
- The first stage was constituted by the actions of Bishop Petru Pruteanu from the Russian Orthodox Church, aimed at transmitting the recording to the Romanian press, as well as attempting to compromise Bishop Veniamin Goreanu.
- The second stage was marked by the sending of images of Metropolitan Petru to 19 hierarchs and personalities of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Bucharest by the priest from the Metropolis of Moldova, Maxim Sturza, the brother-in-law of Vadim Cheibaș, who holds the position of secretary of the Metropolis of Moldova, subordinate to the Russian Orthodox Church. This action, as will be seen below, was attempted to be continued through Iurie Palamarciuc, the protagonist of the film with Metropolitan Petru.
The information presented in this article does not absolve the moral responsibility of Metropolitan Petru, who has caused major harm to the Romanian Orthodox Church in general and the Metropolis of Bessarabia in particular.
Who ordered the publication of the compromising images
The one who coordinated the appearance in the media of the compromising images with the former Metropolitan Petru is the current Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, Petru Pruteanu (baptismal name Mihail). He was born on December 15, 1979, in the village of Corlăteni from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. He began his studies at the Faculty of Theology in Iași in 2001. Until 2003, he was a resident at the “Sfinţii Trei Ierarhi” Monastery in Iași where, in 2002, he took the monastic vows under the name Petru.
In 2003, he was transferred to the Diocese of Edineţ and Briceni, where he was ordained as a hierodeacon and, subsequently, a hieromonk. Concurrently, he pursued his doctoral studies in Moscow and Kiev, where, in 2006, he defended his doctoral thesis.
Since 2012, he has been a priest in Portugal (primarily in the city of Cascais), under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, Diocese of Korsun. And since 2022, he has been the Vicar Bishop of the Metropolis of Western Europe within the Russian Patriarchate, with the title of “Bishop of Caffa”.
Petru Pruteanu, Vicar Bishop of the Western Europe Metropolis within the Russian Patriarchate
Petru Pruteanu’s operation was carried out through a Romanian citizen, Călin Cristi from Bacău. Being close to the clerical environment across the Prut, he acknowledges, in a letter sent to Patriarch Daniel of Romania, that he received the video clip from Pruteanu with the instruction to leak it to the press. At the same time, he states that Pruteanu’s intentions were also to denigrate the Bishop of Southern Bessarabia, Veniamin Goreanu, so that he would not be considered for the leadership of the Metropolis.
“In the course of May 2026, I received through the Facebook Messenger app a video material from Bishop Petru Pruteanu, Vicar-Bishop of Portugal within the Russian Orthodox Church. In that material appeared IPS Petru, the Metropolitan of Bessarabia, together with another person, in an intimate situation. The person who sent me the material claimed that the second person in the video would be PS Veniamin and that he would have distributed the material in the context of interests related to the occupation of the metropolitan seat of Bessarabia” declared Călin Cristi in a letter addressed to the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Daniel.
Furthermore, Călin Cristi states in that letter that, after the video was published, he noticed “the existence of repeated attempts to associate PS Veniamin with this case and to present him in an unfavorable light, including by supporting the idea that he should not be considered for the position of Metropolitan of Bessarabia”.
Source: deschide.md