Eastern Orthodoxy

The Eastern Orthodox Church is the largest religious denomination in Romania, numbering 16,307,004 according to the 2011 census, or 81.04% of the population. The rate of church attendance is, however, significantly lower. According to a poll conducted by INSCOP in July 2015, 37.8% of Romanians who declare themselves to be religious go to church only on major holidays, 25.4% once a week (especially on Sunday), 18.9% once a month, 10.2% once a year or less, 3.4% say they do not go to church, 2.7% a few times a week, and only 0.9% say they go to church daily.^[7]

Latin Church of the Catholic Church

According to the 2011 census, there are 870,774 Catholics belonging to the Latin Church in Romania, making up 4.33% of the population. The largest ethnic groups are Hungarians (500,444, including Székelys; 41% of the Hungarians), Romanians (297,246 or 1.8%), Germans (21,324 or 59%), and Roma (20,821 or 3.3%), as well as a majority of the country's Slovaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Italians, Czechs, Poles, and Csangos (27,296 in all).

Romanian Greek Catholic Church

According to the 2011 census, there are 150,593 Romanian Greek Catholics in Romania, making up 0.75% of the population. The majority of Greek Catholics live in the northern part of Transylvania. Most are Romanians (124,563), with the remainder mostly Hungarians or Roma.

On the other hand, according to data published in the 2016 Annuario Pontificio, the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church had 504,280 members, 8 bishops, 1,225 parishes, some 835 diocesan priests and 235 seminarians of its own rite at the end of 2012.^[8][9] However, according to the 2011 Romanian government census, the number of its followers living in Romania was as low as 150,593, of which 124,563 are ethnic Romanians.^[10] In 2022, the church estimated their numbers at 488,000, noting that many citizens whose ancestors were forced to covert during the Communist regime had rediscovered their roots and joined the Greek Catholic Church.^[11]

The Romanian Orthodox Church continues to claim many of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church's properties.^[12] The law provides for the restitution of religious properties confiscated between 1940 and 1989, if they are still owned by the state; however restitution is moving slowly.^[11]

Protestantism

According to the 2021 census, Protestants make up about 6% of the total population. They have been historically been made up of Lutherans, Calvinists and Unitarians, although in recent years Evangelical Protestants, Pentecostals and newer Protestant groups spread and are holding a greater share. In 1930, prior to World War II, they constituted approximately 8.8% of the Romanian population. The largest denominations are the Reformed Church in Romania and the Pentecostal Union of Romania. Of these various Protestant groups, Hungarians account for most of the Reformed, Unitarians, and Evangelical Lutherans; Romanians are the majority of the Pentecostals, Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists and Evangelical Christians; while Germans account for most of the Augustan Confession Evangelicals (i.e. Lutherans historically subscribing to the Augsburg Confession). The majority of Calvinist (Reformed Church) and Unitarians have their services in Hungarian.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses were banned and persecuted in some occasions in Romania from 1948 to 1989.^[16][17] In 1989, after the Romanian ban was lifted, members and representatives of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses were able to gather thousands of Romanian Jehovah's Witnesses that had been separated for a long time,^[18] but some of them still rejected certain doctrinal changes and preferred their autonomy, forming The True Faith Association of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1992.^[19][20]

Nowadays, Romania is the only country in the world to have 2 different Jehovah's Witnesses organizations.^[19][20]

As for the main group, in 2020, the number of Jehovah's Witnesses was 39,328 active publishers, united in 535 congregations; 74,363 people attended annual celebration of Lord's Evening Meal in 2020.^[21]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) had some presence in the country from 1899–1913. Most of these early members emigrated to the west. The LDS Church was reintroduced in 1990 and a small branch was formed in Bucharest in 1991. In 2019, the LDS Church claimed 3,064 members in 15 congregations in Romania.^[22][23]

Hinduism

This section does not cite any sources. (April 2024)

Since the end of World War II, thousands of Nepali, Bangladeshi and Indian immigrants have brought Hinduism with them. The International Society of Krishna Consciousness operates nearly a dozen temples throughout the nation's largest cities, such as Bucharest, Brasov, Timisaora, Oradea, and others. These temples organize large festivals with Hindu significance such as Ratha Yatra, Diwali and Durga Puja, and see thousands of attendees each year from various religions and people.

Islam

Although the number of adherents of Islam is relatively small, Islam enjoys a 700-year tradition in Romania particularly in Northern Dobruja,^[24] a region on the Black Sea coast which was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries (ca. 1420–1878).^[25] According to the 2011 census, 64,337 people, approx. 0.3% of the total population, indicated that their religion was Islam. The majority of the Romanian Muslims belong to the Sunni Islam.

According to the 2022 census, 76,215 people, approximately 0.4% of the total population, indicated that their religion was Islam.^[6]

97% of the Romanian Muslims are residents of the two counties forming Northern Dobruja: eighty-five percent live in Constanța County, and twelve percent in Tulcea County.^[24] The remaining Muslims live in cities like Bucharest, Brăila, Călărași, Galați, Giurgiu, Drobeta-Turnu Severin.^[24] Ethnically, most of them are Tatars, followed by Turks, Albanians, Muslim Roma, and immigrants from the Middle East and Africa,^[24][26] although there are a few ethnic Romanian converts to Islam who even established a mosque in 2014.^[27][28] Since 2007, there are Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers coming to Romania, who are mostly Muslims.

In Romania there are about 80 mosques.^[29] One of the largest is the Grand Mosque of Constanța, originally known as the Carol I Mosque. It was built between 1910 and 1913, on the order of Carol I, in appreciation for the Muslim community in Constanța. According to the legal status of the Muslim denomination, the Romanian Muslim community is officially represented by a mufti, while the Muftiat is the denominational and cultural representative institution of the Muslim community,^[30] with a status similar with that of the other denominations officially recognized by the Romanian state.^[31] Likewise, Muslims in Constanța, which comprise approx. 6% of the population of this county, are represented in the Parliament by the Democratic Union of Turkish-Muslim Tatars of Romania, founded on 29 December 1989.^[32]

Judaism

In 1930, more than 700,000 people in the Kingdom of Romania (including Bessarabia) practiced Judaism. By 2011, that number had dropped to 3,271. A legacy of the country's once numerous Jewish congregations is the large number of synagogues throughout Romania. Today, between 200,000 and 400,000 descendants of Romanian Jews are living in Israel.

Other religions

Other denominations not listed above but recognised as official religions by the Romanian state are listed here. The Jehovah's Witnesses number around 50,000 adherents (0.25% of the stable population). Old Believers make up about 0.16% of the population with 30,000 adherents, who are mainly ethnic Russians living in the Danube Delta region. Serbian Orthodox believers are present in the areas which border Serbia and number about 14,000 people. Once fairly well represented in Romania, Judaism has fallen to around 3,500 adherents in 2011, which is about 0.02% of the population. Less still is the Armenian Christian minority, numbering about 400 people in total. The Association of Religion Data Archives reports roughly 1,900 followers of the Baháʼí Faith in the country as of 2010.^[33] Lastly, the number of people who have identified with other religions than the ones explicitly mentioned in the 2011 census comes to a total of about 30,000 people.^[34]

Paganism

Neopagan groups have emerged in Romania over the latest decade, virtually all of them being ethno-pagan as in the other countries of European Union,^[35] although still small in comparison to other movements such as Ősmagyar Vallás in Hungary.

The revived ethnic religion of the Romanians is called Zalmoxianism and is based on Thracian mythological sources, with prominence given to the figure of god Zalmoxis.^[36] One of the most prominent Zalmoxian groups is the Gebeleizis Association (Romanian: Societatea Gebeleizis).^[36]

In the same time, in Romania there is a recognized pagan organization: THE NEW PAGAN DAWN Association,^{[37][38][39][40]} which attempts to defend the rights of the pagan community in Romania and to represent its voice.

Irreligion

Approximately 40,000 people have identified as nonreligious in Romania in the 2011 census, of which 21,000 declared atheists and 19,000 agnostics. Most of them are concentrated in major cities such as Bucharest or Cluj-Napoca.^[41] Irreligion is much lower in Romania than in most other European countries; one of the lowest in Europe.^[42]

Other and unknown

In the 2021 Romanian census, 13.94% of respondents refused to state a religious affiliation.^[1]

History

During the existence of the Kingdom of Romania in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the government of Romania systematically favored the Orthodox and Romanian Greek Catholic Churches.^[50] Non-Christians were denied citizenship until the late 19th century, and even then faced obstacles and limited rights.^[51] Antisemitism was a prominent feature of Liberal political currents in the 19th century, before being abandoned by Liberal parties and adopted by left-wing peasant and later fascist groups in the early 20th century.^[52][53] During World War II, several hundred thousand Jews were killed by Romanian or German forces in Romania.^[54] Although Jews living in territories belonging to Romania prior to the beginning of the war largely avoided this fate, they nevertheless faced harsh antisemitic laws passed by the Antonescu government.^[54] During the Socialist era following World War II, the Romanian government exerted significant control over the Orthodox Church and closely monitored religious activity, as well as promoting atheism among the population.^[55] Dissident priests were censured, arrested, deported, and/or defrocked, but the Orthodox Church as a whole acquiesced to the government's demands and received support from it.^[56]

Post 1989

More information Denominations and religious organizations, 1992 census ...

	Denominations and religious organizations	1992 census[57]	2002 census[57]	2011 census[57][58][59]	2022 census[1]	Trend
Traditional Christian denominations	Romanian Orthodox	19,802,389	18,817,975	16,367,267	13,989,584
	Roman Catholic	1,161,942	1,026,429	869,246	741,276
	Greek Catholic	223,327	191,556	160,275	115,364
	Serbian Orthodox	–	–	14,385	55,206
	Old Believers	28,141	38,147	32,558	28,280
	Old Calendarists	32,228	–	–	–	unknown
	Armenian Apostolic	2,023	775	393	804
Protestant Christian denominations	Reformed	802,454	701,077	600,970	495,380
	Pentecostal	220,824	324,462	367,938	404,307
	Baptist	109,462	126,639	118,003	103,157
	Seventh-day Adventist	77,546	93,670	85,902	65,812
	Unitarian	76,708	66,944	57,686	47,991
	Evangelicals	49,963	44,476	42,495	36,339
	Evangelical Lutheran (Synod-Presbyterian)	21,221	27,112	20,168	20,023
	Romanian Evangelical	–	18,178	15,514	7,680
	Evangelical Augustan	39,119	8,716	5,399	3,737
Restorationist Movements	Jehovah's Witnesses	–	–	49,820	43,324
	Mormons	99	1,545	2,800	3,064 (2019)[60]
Others	Islam	55,928	67,257	64,337	76,215
	Judaism	9,670	6,057	3,519	2,707
	Other religion	56,129	89,196	30,557	23,925	unknown
	Without religion	26,314	12,825	23,918	71,417	unknown
	Atheism	10,331	8,524	21,196	57,205
	Undeclared	8,139	11,734	84,753	2,656,477
	Unavailable	–	–	1,259,739

Close

Notes:

¹ Census results were contested by the Romanian Greek Catholic Church^[57] which has a very different self-declared membership of: 2,011,635 (1995), 1,390,610 (2000), 707,452 (2010) and 504,280 (2016)^[61]

Historic Romania