This idea has been supported by Ion Mihai Pacepa, who argued in a 1992 book that Archimandrite Bartolomeu was an agent of the External Intelligence department of the Securitate who was sent to the United States to divide the Romanian community. The short time between his release from prison and the time when he was sent to the United States has been seen as a sign that he had links to the Romanian Securitate. In August 1964, he was freed and only a few months later, in February 1965, he was sent by the communist regime to become an Archimandrite of the Romanian Orthodox Church in the United States and Canada, also editing a religious newspaper called Credința ('The Faith'). Another political prisoner at Aiud, Grigore Caraza, accused Anania of having actively participated in the 're-education' of prisoners, a charge categorically denied by Anania. Communist era Īnania, accused of being associated with the Iron Guard, was arrested by the Communist authorities in 1958 and incarcerated at the Aiud Prison. Afterwards, he continued his studies at the Theology Faculty of the University of Bucharest and the Theological Academies of Cluj and Sibiu, receiving his degree in the latter city in 1948. In 1944, Hierodeacon Bartolomeu began studying Medicine and at the Cluj Conservatory, but he was expelled after organizing a student strike against the new communist government of Petru Groza. In 1942, he was tonsured a monk at the Antim Monastery, graduating from Bucharest's Mihai Viteazul High School the following year.

That year, he spent three weeks under arrest, being accused of participating at the funeral of a member of the Iron Guard. However, he claimed that within the Cross Brotherhood at the Seminary, politics was not discussed and the group was not anti-Semitic, like the rest of the Iron Guard.

Īt the age of 15, Anania, while a student at the Seminary, joined the local organization of the Cross Brotherhood ( Frăția de Cruce), part of the Iron Guard, being introduced to it by an older student. He attended primary school in Glăvile and entered the Bucharest Central Seminary in 1933. Anania was born as Valeriu in Glăvile, Vâlcea County, to Vasile Anania and his wife Ana, the daughter of a priest.

Teatru I by Valeriu Anania