Father Pimen Bărbieru – “a gentle man”
Hieromonk Pimen had come with a bigger batch of prisoners. His Holiness had been sentenced to 25 years of hard labour. (…) When I first saw Father Pimen Bărbieru, he was very thin, only skin and bones. He had haemoptysis. He ate very little. I stayed in the same room on the first floor; I quickly made friends with him because he was communicative by nature: a gentle man with a pleasant conversation. He told me how the members of Colonel Arsenescu’s military resistance organisation in the mountains had been sworn in at his monastery in Cetățeni. He was sentenced for taking the oath and for harbouring some members of the organisation. After treatment with antibiotics and under the care of the M.I.A. doctor, Aurelian Narcea, the prison doctor, he got back on his feet, gained weight and his illness was cured.
(Vasile Cristea, Burning Bush. Orthodox Spiritualists Under the Slabs. Chapter “The Tuberculosis Batch”)