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An official source

In Romania it is possible to get accurate information regarding the number of members belonging to a Church or religion. This is thanks to the national censuses that are carried out every ten years where people are asked what their religious affiliation is.
The first concerns over demographic statistics appeared in 1859, when the Union of the Principalities took place with the election of a single monarch for Walachia and Moldavia, Alexandru Ioan Cuza. Despite the lack of precision, the general population census of 1859 represented a marker and a criterion of comparison for all the censuses that were carried out every five years after that. As of 1892, an almanac of religions and their statistical and administrative situation was published each year. It wasn’t until December 1930 that the first general census of unified Romania (1918) took place, under the direction of the outstanding Romanian sociologist Dimitrie Gusti. The main goal was to establish, as precisely as possible, the distribution of the Romanian population according to ethnic group and record its religious affiliation.

D 2 October 2012    ALaurenţiu Tănase

CNRS Unistra Dres Gsrl

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