In 1942, during the Holocaust, he intervened in Bucharest against the planned deportation of Romanian Jews from the Regat, Southern Transylvania and the Banat to the Nazi extermination camps.

In 1948, after a communist regime was established, he publicly assisted the new authorities in their effort to disband the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church.

[1] He graduated from the Năsăud gymnasium in 1900 and attended the Theology faculty of Czernowitz University from 1900 to 1904, obtaining his doctorate there the following year.

[2] A member of the Sibiu Archdiocese's synod and of the Metropolis of Transylvania's national church council, he founded and edited Revista Teologică between 1907 and 1916.

[4] During the Crown Council session of August 29–30, 1940, he protested against the Second Vienna Award and its cession of Northern Transylvania to Hungary, advocating the reversal of this decision during World War II.

[2] In 1942, during the Holocaust, he was among those who protested plans for deporting Romanian Jews from the Old Kingdom, the Banat and southern Transylvania, a scheme that was ultimately not carried out.

[5] The communist regime did not persecute Bălan for his Iron Guard past because he proved a useful instrument in the suppression of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church.

[6][4] In May 1948, at a ceremony in Blaj marking the centenary of the assembly that gathered there during the 1848 revolution, he repeated the call to Greek-Catholics, a gesture that drew opposition not only from members of that church, but also from Orthodox clerics such as Bishop Nicolae Popoviciu.