Catholic Church in Romania
[2] Smaller Latin Catholic communities exist among Banat Bulgarians, Italian-Romanians, Polish-Romanians, Croat-Romanians and Krashovani, Czech-Romanians and the local Romani people.
[4][5] The Archdiocese of Bucharest is the metropolitan see for the entire country's Latin jurisdiction, directly overseeing the regions of Muntenia, Northern Dobruja and Oltenia; it has around 52,000 parishioners, most of them Romanians.
[1] Among the journals issued by Catholic institutions are the Romanian-language Actualitatea Creștină (Bucharest) and Lumina Creștinului (Iași), as well as the Hungarian-language Keresztény Szó and Vasárnap (both in Cluj-Napoca).
Inaugurated by the early presence of Benedictines, these were strengthened by the colonization of Transylvanian Saxons,[1] as well as by missionary activities among the local Vlach (Romanian) population[1] and forceful conversions.
[7][11][12] Tradition holds that this was done under supervision from King Stephen I — according to the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, a more likely patron is Ladislaus I, who ruled almost a century after (the first bishop it lists is Simon, who held the see between 1103 and 1113).
[11] In 1304, Pope Boniface VIII sent the first Catholic missionaries from Transylvania into the lands over the Carpathian Mountains (the area known as "Cumania"), where Eastern Orthodox bishops were already present.
[11] The Diocese of Cumania disappeared for a while, as locals took over its property, but was revived in 1332–1334, when Pope John XXII appointed the Franciscan Vitus de Monteferro, the chaplain of King Charles Robert, as the new bishop.
[14] Direct control over the congregation was made difficult by the intrusion of the Golden Horde, who had set up its base in the region later known as Budjak (present-day southern Ukraine).
[17] In Moldavia, Prince Lațcu began negotiations with Pope Urban V and agreed to convert to Catholicism (1369); following a period of trouble, this political choice was to be overturned by Petru I during the 1380s.
[1] The first community to embrace a Protestant creed were the Transylvanian Saxons, most of whom adhered to the Lutheran Augsburg Confession as early as 1547,[2][11] followed soon after by large groups of the Hungarian population, who converted to Calvinism.
[11] An unprecedented stalemate was reached in 1568, under John II Sigismund Zápolya, when the Edict of Torda sanctioned freedom of religion and awarded legal status to the Latin Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran and Unitarian churches alike (while viewing the majority Orthodox as "tolerated").
[2] The Alba Iulia see was revived soon after the Catholic Stefan Batory took the Transylvanian throne in succession to Zápolya (who had since become King of Hungary).
[11] During that age, Latin Catholics were recognized an autonomous structure, which allowed clerics and laity to organize teaching and administrate community schools.
[22] In parallel, Hungary-proper was integrated into Habsburg domains (1622), which created a new base for Counter-Reformation, as well as a local seat for the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.
[22] In Moldavia, Catholicism was reasserted among the Csángós before around 1590, when Franciscan friars took charge of the diocese reestablished in Bacău (1611)[18] and first led by Bernardino Quirini.
[11] It was also under Maria Theresia that Catholic teaching and school administration came under the supervision of the Commissio catholica (this remained the rule under the Austrian Empire and the early years of Austria-Hungary).
The Latin bishop, invoking the Fourth Lateran Council, asserted that the Romanian Greek Catholic clergy were subordinate to him.
[35] In 1812, the Franciscan Bulgarian Catholic Bishop of Chiprovtsi decided, as a result of an epidemic in the city, to move his seat to the village of Cioplea (presently part of Bucharest).
Romania was defeated by the Central Powers and signed the Treaty of Bucharest, but its diplomats remained active in Allied countries, setting up the National Romanian Council in Paris.
Trăirism, an anti-Western Romanian political theory led by Nae Ionescu, associated Catholics with a "fundamentally different mode of existence" than true Romanian-ness.
[29] During the Conference, the Ion I. C. Brătianu cabinet and representatives of Pope Benedict XV established preliminary contacts, a gesture coinciding with the encyclical Pacem, Dei Munus Pulcherrimum (which, in turn, redefined relations between the Holy See and individual states).
[30] Through a decision taken by Foreign Minister Duiliu Zamfirescu, the outgoing Ghika was replaced with Dimitrie Pennescu, who was Romania's first ambassador to the Vatican.
[1] Over the early 1920s, the Holy See and Romania engaged in several diplomatic disputes: in one case, the Catholic Church declared itself dissatisfied by the effects of a land reform carried out in 1920–1921 (as a result of talks, it was occasionally allowed to keep larger estates than the law permitted);[39] in parallel, Romanian authorities were dissatisfied with the activities of certain Latin Catholic prelates in Transylvania and Hungary, whom they suspected of actively supporting Hungarian irredentism (in one of his notes to the Vatican, Pennescu condemned the politically motivated letters addressed by Gyula Glattfelder, the Bishop of Timișoara, to his Hungarian-majority congregation).
[46] In parallel, after 1945, Vladimir Ghika and others led a movement calling for a union between the Latin Catholic and Romanian Orthodox Churches, which caused further suspicions from the new authorities.
[46] In 1946, the Groza cabinet declared Apostolic Nuncio Andrea Cassulo a persona non grata, alleging that he had collaborated with Romania's wartime dictator, Ion Antonescu; he was replaced with Gerald Patrick Aloysius O'Hara, who continued to face accusations that he was spying in favor of the Western Allies.
[49] New state regulations were designed to abolish papal authority over Catholics in Romania, and the Latin Church, although it was one of the sixteen recognized religions, lacked legal standing, as its organizational charter was never approved by the Department of Cults.
[47][52] Among Catholic clerics to die in confinement were the bishops Szilárd Bogdánffy and Durcovici, Monsignor Ghika, and the Jesuit priest Cornel Chira.
[24] The communist repression of against Latin clergy took a less severe form than that against first the Ruthenians of Galicia and then the Romanian Greek Catholics; it was met by resolve among all groups.
[7] Religious institutes were once again permitted to function,[1] and Jesuit activities were freely resumed following the 1990 visit of Provincial superior Peter Hans Kolvenbach.
The confederation currently has ten local Caritas member organisation implementing social and humanitarian activities for the most vulnreable in Romanian society.
