History of Christianity in Romania - Romania Since 1989

Romania Since 1989

The Communist regime came to an abrupt end on December 22, 1989. The poet Mircea Dinescu, who was the first to speak on liberated Romanian television, began his statement with the words: "God has returned his face toward Romania again". The new constitution of Romania, adopted in 1992, guarantees the freedom of thought, opinion, and religious beliefs when manifested in a spirit of tolerance and mutual respect. Eighteen groups are currently recognized as religious denominations in the country. Over 350 other religious associations has also been registered, but they do not enjoy the right to build houses of worship or to perform rites of baptism, marriage, or burial.

Since the fall of Communism, about fourteen new Orthodox theology faculties and seminaries have been opened, Orthodox monasteries have been reopened, and even new monasteries has been found, for example, in Recea. The Holy Synod has canonized new saints, among them Stephen the Great of Moldavia (1457–1504), and declared the second Sunday after Pentecost the "Sunday of the Romanian Saints".

The Greek Catholic hierarchy was fully restored in 1990. The four Roman Catholic dioceses in Transylvania, composed primarily of Hungarian-speaking inhabitants, hoped to be united into a distinct ecclesiastical province, but only Alba Iulia was raised to an archbishopric and placed directly under the jurisdiction of the Holy See in 1992. After the exodus of the Transylvanian Saxons to Germany, only 30,000 of the members of the German Lutheran Church remained in Romania by the end of 1991. According to the 2002 census, 86.7 percent of Romania's total population was Orthodox, 4.7 percent Roman Catholic, 3.2 percent Reformed, 1.5 percent Pentecostal, 0.9 percent Greek Catholic, and 0.6 percent Baptist.