During the first part of his life, he was active in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, earning his reputation as a Christian philanthropist and putting out the pioneering church magazine Nashe Obyedineniye.

[9] He recommended himself as an early champion of the lower classes: "To the end of his days, he remained proud of the fact that he had achieved the dismissal of a zemstvo chief, who struck a peasant in the face.

"[22] Similarly, in a Bessarabian column published by Neamul Românesc in October 1910, Cecan's paper was described as a "clerical gazette", whose Moldavian-only content was to "facilitate the learning of Russian by the Moldavians."

[29] He was moderating his stances: although still representing the "right-wing section of the Eparchy", he opened up to former adversaries on the right and the left, together with whom he put out Bessarabya (1914), then Bessarabaskaya Pochta and Nash Dolg (both 1915).

[34] Cecan himself acknowledged that the government of Prince Golitsyn was paying him 1,200 rubles monthly, because he "championed ethnic-Russian interests on the periphery of Russia and fought against the separatism of Moldavian elements".

[36] In the aftermath, the Russian Provisional Government stopped donating to propaganda outlets, including Cecan's and his newspapers, causing him to issue a note of protest.

[36] As reported by Șornikov, Cecan defied the Romanian military intervention in Bessarabia by making frequent trips into the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR) and bringing back with him works of anti-Romanian propaganda.

Settling in Odessa (which remained his main residence to May 1920), he was first co-opted by the Committee for the Salvation of Bessarabia, formed there by two Russian nationalist leaders, Krupensky and Alexandr K.

A late report notes his presence in Odessa station, "cross in hand", and using the racial trope conflating Romanians with nomadic Romanies (he was "urging the Russian soldiers to chase the Gypsies out of Bessarabia").

He obtained approval from Metropolitan Gurie Grosu (in exchange for Cecan's promise that he would stay out of Chișinău), but still returned to Bessarabia "essentially illegally", by rowing his boat across the Dniester.

[60] As noted by Șornikov, the Cecan dossier became unusually large; although agents working his case "were illiterate and negligent", the file offers a minute record of his beliefs and affiliations.

[61] In the mid 1920s, he had reconciled with the regionalist caucus, and was pushing for increased autonomy of the Metropolis (though he still disliked Gurie, and called his election a sample of "banditry" by the Romanian state officials);[54] he returned to his old ecumenical goals, working closely with the Catholic Bishopric of Iași and Monsignor Anton Gabor to set up a Christian institute in Bessarabia.

[63] In January 1929, days after executive power had been handed to the National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), Cecan attended the Bessarabian Agronomists' Congress, where he spoke about the need to increase productivity among the smallholders.

Called Raza ("The Ray") or Svet ("Light"), his newspaper drew negative attention from the Siguranța, which intervened to have the Union sack Cecan from his editorial position.

Cecan was upset to note that Raza was being republished under new management, and resorted to recounting his version of events in another newspaper he issued for a period, called Khristianskaya Pobeda ("Christian Victory").

[72] In early April, Gurie Grosu ordered an investigation of Cecan's activity, with the latter "accused of having carried out an intense propaganda in favor of uniting the Romanian and Catholic churches.

"[73] Cecan had retired from priesthood by April 11, complaining to Brînzeu that he was being formally investigated by the Romanian Synod for "Catholicizing" Bessarabia, but also noting that he had gained many followers.

According to Merloz: "the press was entirely Jewish and of a marked communist tendency, and so Father Jérémie Cecan's review, then his newspaper, also have roles in social defense and in the workers' and peasants' organization, as well as in the religious unification with Rome.

[43] The discourse promoted by Khristianskaya Pobeda became the topic of a larger controversy when the Mayor of Chișinău, Dimitrie Bogos, drafted a citizens' letter which openly censured Cecan for his "right-wing extremism".

The priest was immediately defended by a group of supporters, who noted that Bogos had no mandate to speak for the whole citizenry, and that he had issued no such protest against communists, even as they "carried out violent attacks in the city streets.

"[78] Though turning to far-right antisemitism, Cecan had initially derided Nazism: in a 1930 article for Khristianskaya Pobeda, he had disparaged Adolf Hitler by calling him a "German painter".

[43] Styled "independent national-Christian" in its original format,[75] Telegraf became identifiable as a tribune of an openly Nazi group, the Romanian National Socialist Party (PNSR).

[79] The merger of platforms began in August 1933, when Cecan and an associate, Major Rotaru, wrote a piece favoring a "Singular Nationalist Front" comprising the PNSR, the National-Christian Defense League, and the Iron Guard.

This alliance, they argued, would follow the model of the German Nazi Party by uniting Romanians "around the national Christian flag", "uproot[ing] the old, Jewified, rot of politicking".

[82] Elected to the party's executive leadership structure on that occasion,[83] Cecan also served as leader of the PNSR cell in Chișinău, alongside Vasile Leidenius, publisher of Voskresenie newspaper.

[89] Shortly ahead of the election itself, Cecan Sr signed his name as an "Iron Guard member" to a manifesto asking sympathizers to embrace the National Liberal Party-Brătianu.

[37] In June, he addressed the Romanian Orthodox Church in an open letter, calling for a renewed work of religious instruction and "pastoral apostolate", which, he argued, would have prevented Romania from going the way of the Soviet Union.

"[91][92] His multiculturalism still found backers inside the ecclesiastical structures—in July, his associate Pavel Guciujna again attempted to raise the issue of multilingual publishing by the Union of the Bessarabian Clergy.

In his articles for the paper, Cecan decried the victories of fascism—from the rise of Japanese statism and the assassination of Alexander Karađorđević, to German rearmament and the establishment of a Reich Labor Service; he also applauded the Romanian–Soviet rapprochement as a seed of "union with Russia".

[108] In the Soviet Union, he was chiefly remembered for his Nazism: in 1988, philosopher Alexandru Babii described Cecan as a "vivid example of the link between clerical anti-communism and German fascism".