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The situation of the Orthodox Church

The majority religion in Romania is Orthodox. According to the 2011 census of the National Institute of Statistics 16,3077,004 (81.04% of the population) people belong to the Orthodox Church. A large proportion of the total members of the Orthodox Church (15,730,426) are Romanian, which, without denying the importance of national belonging, contributes to affirming that the element of religious identity, in Romania’s case, is closely related to the ethnic element.
According to history, Christianity began being preached to the inhabitants of present-day Dobroudja (in the south east of Romania, on the Black Sea), as of the second half of the first century by the Apostle Andrew himself. He began to have more and more followers especially after the Edict of Tolerance of Milan in 313. Thus, Romanians are among the most ancient of Christian people and the only Latin people to belong to the Orthodox Church.
Until the 17th century the religious service was celebrated in Slavic, which was considered a sacred language. In 1885, Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople recognised the autocephaly of the Romanian Orthodox Church. In 1925 it was raised to the ranks of Patriarchate and Miron Cristea became the first Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Since 2007, His Beatitude Daniel Ciobotea is the sixth patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Romania.
The Romanian Orthodox Church is very prestigious in Romanian society, on a symbolic spiritual and cultural level and as the guardian of values identified with the Romanian people.
The Orthodox Church of Romania is predominant in all cities and villages of the country, except in the three counties of Transylvania (Covasna, Harghita and Mures) where the majority of the population is Hungarian.
The successive results of the Public Opinion Metre from January 2014 to April 2015 show that the Romanian Orthodox Church is the most trusted of institutions.
The Romanian Orthodox Church is also the institution that is best represented in the Romanian diaspora. There are even two Metropolitan Romanian Orthodox churches in Europe, in Nuremberg, Germany (metropolitan Seraphin) and in Paris, France (metropolitan Josef). Internationally, the Romanian Orthodox Church is the ranked second among Orthodox Churches in the world, after the Russian Orthodox Church, in terms of number of followers.

D 13 August 2015    ALaurenţiu Tănase AManuela Gheorghe APetrisor Ghidu

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