In eight months, he surpassed expectations by paying off all debts to creditors of years past and re-establishing his printing press's credibility on the market.

The future Patriarch Justinian owed his ascendancy within the church hierarchy to the fact that he had helped the Communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej to hide in the parish house at St. George's after the latter's escape from the Târgu Jiu internment camp in 1944.

Wurmbrand was in constant trouble with the authorities because of his outspokenness towards the regime but he credits Justinian on using his influence in the early days of his Patriarchate to ensure he was allowed to keep his license to preach.

The Metropolitan of Moldavia, Irineu Mihălcescu, who had been elected to his position on November 29, 1939, was ill and in serious need of a young, energetic and capable person to help him rebuild the diocese, gravely affected by war damage.

[citation needed] On August 11, 1945, at Cetăţuia Monastery in Iaşi, the priest Ioan Marina was tonsured a monk, receiving the monastic name Justinian and being ordained an archimandrite as well.

[citation needed] On August 16, 1947, the aged and sick Metropolitan Irineu retired from his position and Patriarch Nicodim named Justinian as locum tenens until a permanent successor was elected.

On November 19, 1947, the Ecclesiastical Electoral College met at Bucharest, with Metropolitan Nicolae Bălan of Transylvania presiding (the Patriarch was resting at Neamţ Monastery).

[citation needed] He was enthroned on December 28, 1947, at the Iaşi Metropolitan Cathedral, during a Divine Liturgy celebrated by an assembly of bishops, priests and deacons, in the presence of members of the Holy Synod, of representatives of the central and local governments (two days before the Romanian People's Republic was proclaimed), and of numerous clergy and laymen.

[citation needed] In the three years that he spent at Iaşi as vicar bishop and then Metropolitan of Moldavia, Justinian put in tremendous efforts to rebuild the diocese, heavily damaged by war and scorched by drought.

He restored the cathedral and the metropolitan's residence, as well as the nearby buildings, which had been marred by bullets and shells and left without windows, with cracked walls and holes in their roofs, and with the objects inside scattered and partly lost.

He brought these buildings back into a well-functioning state, including the diocesan candle factory, which had almost ceased its activity during the war.

At the same time, he hired young, virtuous monks to serve at the cathedral, naming the Archimandrite Teoctist Arăpaşu to the post of ecclesiarch.

The relics wended their way through the drought-deserted villages of Iaşi, Vaslui, Roman, Bacău, Putna, Neamţ, Baia and Botoşani Counties.

The offerings collected on this occasion were distributed, based on Metropolitan Justinian's decisions, to orphans, widows, invalids, school cafeterias, churches under construction, and to monasteries in order to feed the sick, and old or feeble monks.

20,000 Greek-Catholic clergy (including those who had signed the declaration at Cluj) and laity from across Transylvania participated; they were solemnly received into the Romanian Orthodox Church.

[citation needed] In 1950 the Holy Synod decided, for the first time, to canonize several Romanian hierarchs, monks and pious believers, and to generalize the cult of certain saints whose relics are found in Romania.

[citation needed] From his enthronement to his death, as Mihai Urzică writes, "faced with the adversities to which the Church was subjected, Patriarch Justinian proved himself an able diplomat and tried, as much as he could, to withstand the attacks launched against the house of the Lord.

He maintained a close unity among the ranks of the clergy, he provided support for priests who were political detainees and monks released from prison and restored many churches and monasteries, resisting the sanctions, threats and even the house arrest to which, for a time, he was subjected".

[citation needed] Justinian protested against Decree 410 of November 19, 1959, which ordered that new monks must be at least 55 years old and nuns at least 50, and due to which some 5,000 monastics were removed from their monasteries.