 After World War II, Bessarabia was occupied by the USSR, which was hostile to the church.The body of the church was downgraded to a "Bishopric of Chişinău and Moldova" under the Russian Orthodox Church.After 1991, the Bishop of Bălți, Petru, led a movement that re-instated the former Metropolitan See of Bessarabia, reviving the one existing in the interwar period, and placing it under the authority of the Romanian Orthodox Church, but retaining a larger degree of autonomy than the other Metropolitanates of the Romanian Orthodox Church.