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Other religions

Other Churches are present in Romania, though their number of members makes them less important than the Romanian Orthodox Church. The other Churches that are present are: the Roman Catholic Church (4.3%, 870,774 members), the Reformed Church (3%, 600,932 members), the Church of God (Apostolic Pentecostal) (1.8%, 362, 314 members), the Greek-Catholic Church (0.75%, 150, 593 members).

Added to these, in decreasing order according to number of members, the Baptist Church (0.56%, 112,850 members), the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (0.4%, 80,944 members), Muslims (0.3%, 64, 337 members), the Unitarian Church (0.3%, 57,686 members), Jehovah’s Witnesses (0.25% with 49,820 members), Evangelical Christians (0.2% with 42,495 members), the Romanian Evangelical Church (0.16% with 32,558 members). There is also the old rite Orthodox Church (0.1%), Protestants of the Augsburg Creed (0.03%), Jews (0.02%) and the Armenian Church and its 393 members (N.I.S. census 2011). People "without religion" and atheists in each category represent 0.1% of the population while in 6.2% of questionnaires, the information on religious affiliation was not available.

The Greek-Catholic Church (150,481 members, 0.75% of the population), which is dependant on the Vatican, played an important role in the history of the Romanian people, along with the Romanian Orthodox Church, particularly in Transylvania. Thanks to its ties with Rome, it was able encourage the use of the Latin alphabet and the Romanian language during religious services towards the beginning of the 19th century. It was suppressed during the communist regime and regained its rights after the Revolution of December 1989. Currently, it is headed by the Cardinal Lucian Muresan.

The Roman Catholic Church has a large number of members who belong to the Hungarian ethnic group, but its members also include Romanians, Germans and other nationalities. The Catholic Church in Romania is coordinated by a conference of Catholic Bishops whose president is Metropolitan Ioan Robu, Archbishop of Bucharest.

The Reformed Church, the Unitarian Church, the Lutheran Church and the Evangelical Church are the churches of the Hungarian (the first three) and German minorities. Other churches belonging to national minorities are the Old Rite Christian Church (the Russians “Lipovans”, people of Russian origin that live in the north of Dobroudja and in the Delta of the Danube), the Armenian Church, Islam and Judaism.

D 13 August 2015    ALaurenţiu Tănase AManuela Gheorghe APetrisor Ghidu

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