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$Unique_ID{bob00443}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Romania
Education}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{David Aurel}
$Affiliation{News Agency Rompres}
$Subject{church
romanian
christian
first
education
orthodox
dacia
century
religious
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$Date{1990}
$Log{}
Title:       Romania
Book:        Romania December 1989-December 1990
Author:      David Aurel
Affiliation: News Agency Rompres
Date:        1990

Education

     "Studii asupra instructiunei publice in unele din statele cele mai
inaintate ale Europei"/Studies of Public Instruction in Some of the Most
Advanced States in Europe is the title of a book which has not been put out by
the Institute of Education Sciences recently set up in Bucharest. Although it
should concern itself with such matters.

     The author of the aforementioned book is scholar Gheorghe Costa-Foru and
he submitted it to public attention in 1860! As a matter of fact, the Law of
Instruction, adopted four years later, and the subsequent regulations included
the premises of Costa-Foru's work. An education policy resulted based on the
most advanced pedagogical ideas of the epoch.

     Nowhere, nothing can come out of nothing. It is anxiom. And it is all the
more true when it comes to school. Well, towards the end of the last century,
Romanian high school education was well appreciated in the world of learning.
The structure of that type of education had been worked out with the
contribution of Spiru Haret, minister of instruction at that time. And also a
renowned mathematician. That could explain the solid training of the pupils
learning exact sciences. And since any man of science is also a man of
letters, Haret gave humanities the place they deserved. Hence, the classes
where the stress fell on the mother tongue, modern, widely spoken languages,
classic languages, history, philosophy.

     The reform of almost one century ago, initiated by Spiru Haret, also
stipulated a high-school network complementary to that of theoretical high
schools i.e. industrial high schools and vocational schools, the curriculum of
which included fundamental elements of general and specialty knowledge. Stress
was laid first of all on perfectly learning a trade.

     The pre-university education network was widely diversified: state-run,
private, confessional schools, classes and schools with tuition in the
languages of the ethnic minorities. Everything met the principle of observance
of civic rights and freedoms, enshrined in the 1923 Constitution of the
country.

     In general lines, that structure was preserved until after the second
world war when the communist regime demolished traditions.

     The 1948 reform pursued the structuring of education after the Soviet
model. The 1968 Law, with the subsequent amendments, more particularly those
after 1980, only simulated a departure from the eastern model - actually
laying stress on totalitarian characteristics. Although over the interwar
period illiteracy was liquidated, general and compulsory education was
expanded, education of all grades became free of charge, the level of general
knowledge rose, the negative elements were the unprecedented ideologization of
learning activities, gradual renunciation of all valuable experiments (the
special classes of mathematics, physics, chemistry high schools with tuition
in foreign languages, teaching of modern languages starting with the first or
second form). On the other hand, the expences for education dropped
dramatically over the past ten years accounting for less than seven per cent
of government's expense, Romania placing last in Europe from this point of
view.

     Nevertheless, to the credit of the Romanian education, of those serving
it, traditions were not forgotten. Certainly, it was not a mass phenomenon,
whole generations were compelled to adapt themselves to Procust's bed, which
was too small and which has always been disavowed..

     Now, before a new reform of education is to be implemented, the relevant
ministry decided to intervene is to be made to structures thoroughly verified
before 1948. Thus, starting this fall many pre-university education
institutions bear the "theoretical high school" sign.

     As for the industrial high-schools their excessively large number is to
be reduced. Those that will continue to operate and the vocational schools of
the same kind will form groups using the same material base. And since the
industrial high-schools will have to provide general knowledge like the
theoretical ones the former will benefit from an additional year.

     This is not the only novelty in the field of high-school education. Maybe
the most substantial change is a genuinely reasonable specialization. Modern
specialties, that are to meet the requirements of the Romanian economy, have
priority. Besides the several existing high schools of informatics
informatics sections have been set up in numerous other high-schools - either
theoretical or industrial.

     Worth mentioning is an altogether rather peculiar type of high school,
that of technical-scientific creativity and inventics. It started operating in
Ploiesti and its pupils will get a basic scientific training (inventics,
technical-scientific creation, physics - theory and practical activities,
mathematics and informatics, chemistry, biology, economics, history of
science, rethorics, technical drawing), but also humanistic and social
knowledge (Romanian language and literature, foreign languages, history,
sociology, democracy, philosophy, logic a.o.). The high-school is to be
equipped with most up-to-date facilities manufactured in Romania or other
countries (Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands). And
one point: the new high school is the outcome of a private initiative. Such
initiatives have also materialized in other towns as well and cover various
grades - from preschool education (kindergartens with tuition in foreign
languages) to higher learning (the Ecologic University - the first in the
world, U'90, "Athenaeum", "Hyperion").

     Inevitably, many aspects approached in connection with general education
apply to higher learning as well. The measures taken devolve from this general
state of affairs, but also from specific conditions.

     First of all the higher learning network had to be extended with new
faculties, departments and specialties. One of the reasons for such a process
was the inadmissibly small number of students out of 100,000 inhabitants
which, over 1980-1985 dropped from 868 to 647, placing Romania last but one in
Europe. Another reason: the faulty structure of education the technical and
polytechnical share of which (64-66 per cent) was exagerate.

     Consequently, universities have been created in Sibiu, Constanta,
Suceava, Oradea, Bacau, higher learning institutes in Pite-sti, Arad,
Hunedoara, Braila. As a matter of fact, all these university centres have not
emerged overnight, the aforementioned towns boasting, more than twenty years
ago, higher learning institues, pedagogical in particular.

     While last year there were 101 faculties with 274 departments,
starting this fall there are almost 200 faculties with over 600 departments.

     The range of specialties has also been widened - from 99 to over 180. New
specialties have been included imposed by market economic modernization:
industrial robotics, management, marketing, production system engineering,
economic informatics, international economic relations, environmental
protection, ecology a.o. On the other hand, specialties either marginalized
or dissolved in the past have been reestablished: sociology, psychology
pedagogy, journalistics, bibliology and printing science.

     The three-year technical engineer departments have been given up being
turned into four-year exploitation engineer departments.

     State-subsidised education is parallelled by private learning. With
different specialties but also with similar ones. Here is the so much longed
for competition, which should lead to higher competence.

CONSTANTIN LUPU

THE PRESS

     The beginnings of the Romanian press date back to sometime around 1830
when there manifested, ideologically, the ideas of the Enlightenment and,
socio-culturally, the struggle to reawaken the national consciousness and
develop education, science, literature and the arts. All this brought to the
fore the need for a press capable of mirroring and disseminating the
progressive, democratic ideas. The first Romanian periodicals appeared in
1829: Curierul Romanesc, published in Bucharest, Albina Romaaneasca,
published Ia-si. In 1838, at Bra-sov was printed the first issue of Gazeta de
Transilvania.

     The policy of those three periodicals was to inform readers of renewals
in the world and especially in Europe, to reawaken the national consciousness
and, at the same time, to stimulate and help the progress of the national
language and culture. They were, as we would say today, popular papers using
a language accessible to broad categories of readers.

     A landmark in the history of the Romanian press was set of January 1,
1838 when the first daily - Romania - appeared.

     Early this century there was an upsurge in press activity, which was to
contribute to a democratic climate, to the assertion of outstanding
journalists, many of whom were also remarkable politicians or scholars.
Democratic ideas gained ground against a backdrop of political effervescence,
as political life developed and reached between the wars, an unprecedented
level.

     Standing out among the influential dailies were the
democratically-oriented Romanul, Timpul, Universul, Adevarul, Lupta,
Diminea-ta.

     After the communist party monopolized the power, the scope of the
democratic dialogue and ideas shrank more and more. As opposition parties
quickly disappeared, so did their press organs, hundreds of publications
ceasing to appear. Political totalitarianism engulfed the press too.

     It was the darkest period of the Romanian press, a time when information
standardization, systematic disinformation, censorship and intellectual
robotization seriously impaired the development of the human personality.

     After the Revolution of December 1989 a genuine boom of the Romanian
mass media has occured. The phenomenon is explicable and illustrative of the
new democracy. The historical parties resumed activity. New parties have
been created, the total number of parties now exceeding one hundred. Most
of them issue one or several publications - dailies or periodicals.
Significantly, the newspapers and reviews published in the languages of the
national minorities, freed of the restrictions enforced by totalitarianism,
have largely contributed to revigorating and diversifying the press in
post-revolutionary Romania. The unions of the minorities issue a wide range
of publications - chiefly political and cultural - which approach both
general-interest problems and the specific problems of the respective ethnic
groups of the areas where they live. Thus, for instance there are now about
80 Magyar-language newspapers and reviews. The current diversity of the press
in Romania is also evidenced by the large number of publications issued by
ministries and departments, by various professional, civil or cultural
associations, by higher education establishments and even by schools.
Moreover, many dailies and reviews are published, which belong to private
investors. In Romania there is now a total of over one thousand newspapers
and magazines published in millions of copies.

M. CONSTANTINESCU

Christianity with the Romanians

     Christianity penetrated the geographical space inhabited by our
Geto-Dacian ancestors as early as the Apostolic age, first in the Pontic
Dacian lands in the beginning, its penetration was sporadic it became more
intense in Scythia Minor (Dobrogea). The Holy Gospel reached us from the
East and the South. Saint Andrew, The Apostle preached in Macedonia, Thracia
and the Danubian regions ("Scythia"), in strongholds and settlements along
the western shore of the Pontus Euxinous. In the early centuries of the
Christian era the fortresses and urban settlements raised along the Danube,
then the famous trade routes of Dacia Pontica and Dacia Malvensis that
especially after the Romans occupation of Dacia (A.D. 106) facilitated
multiple links with the Roman Empire, eased the way for the penetration of
Christianity here via the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor.

     Since the first centuries already, Christianity was to Daco-Romans
not only a matter of faith, but a fact of essential, deep-going spiritual
implications upon their life Christianity constituted a crucial
historical-cultural phenomenon demonstrating the population's capacity to keep
alive the flame of an intense spiritual life. Together with the Greeks and the
Romans, the ancient Romanians were among the first Christian populations of
South-East Europe in whose territory patristic writings were compiled and
used. The history of Christianity, especially the patristic literature,
supplies persuasive arguments as to the Daco-Roman autochthons' permanent,
continuous habitation in the Carpathian-Danubian-Pontic space.

     The fundamental terminology specific of our Christian life reveals
Latin etimologies, thereby proving irrefutably that its creator was this
Oriental Latin people be it for the simple fact that in the first centuries
of the Christian era the Daco-Romans were Latin speakers.

     It happened at a time when Christian terminology could not reach us from
Rome via books, missionaries or otherwise. Unlike other neighbour peoples
whose history recorded the exact date of their official Christianization,
the Romanians got their baptism over the space of the first centuries of the
Christian era. The process developed by both individual conversion and
missionary persuasion, coming to fulfilment at the same time with the Romanian
people's ethnogenesis. Historical literary attestations, archaeological
evidence, basilica bases, paleo-Christian inscriptions dated to the Dacia
Pontica, the ex-Trajan Dacia, and the Free Dacia were excavated in a large
number of settlements in all historical provinces of Romania.

     There were here already in the early 4th century bishop's seats in
Dobrogea (the erstwhile Scythia Minor) and the South Danubian Roman provinces
a religious structure is thought to have existed in the region of Buzau and
in Oltenia during the 4th-6th centuries.

     The Lord Bishop of Scythia Minor was present at the first Ecumenical
Synod of 325. A certain Gerontie or Terentie, archpastor of Tomis, attended
the 2nd Ecumenical Synod. The Lord Bishop Timotei of Tomis participated in
the 3rd Ecumenical Synod while the acta of the 4th Ecumenical Synod carried
the signature of the high priest Alexander of Tomis. Paternus of Tomis
signed the edicts of a local Synod in Constantinople (520) in his position of
"Metropolitan of Scythia".

     Throughout the time, Christianity and its vast biblic, liturgical and
patristic literature proved to have been an active and efficient element
in preserving the ancient Romanian and the Romanian ethos. It was a basic
element in shaping the Romanian culture and language of after years, in
crystallizing the ethnic unity and then, the national consciousness.

     Dacia was the hub where the great cultures met.

     After the pullback of the Roman armies and administration from the lands
north of the Danube in 271, Romania's present-day territory continued to be
called Dacia whereas the lands south of the Danube, parts of Lower and Upper
Moesia for sure, became known as Dacia Aureliana. All those territories, whose
common denominator was the term Dacia, continued to be bound by close links,
without a break, until the 7th century when the Slavic migration somewhat
altered the situation, in political relations in the first place.

     Scythia Minor was the gate to the Christian Orient that let Christian
culture penetrate our lands. In the 4th-6th centuries both Greek and Latin
were in use in Tomis. It was this bishop's seat that later spread the
Christian faith throughout Dacia Pontica, all over the Danubian-Pontic space.

     The ancient Christian inscriptions undug in large numbers in our
regions, in the Lower Danube lands and the erstwhile Dacia constitute very
important documentary stuff, offering the full measure of the extent to which
the faithful had assimilated the teachings of the Holy Scripture, of the
religious books and patristic writings circulated here as early as the 4th
century. Not only did those holy texts not disappear, but they were
multiplied, maybe at dioceses, monasteries or important churches.

     The basement of over thirty churches dating from the 4th-6th centuries
has been undug so far in the territory of one-time Scythia Minor.
Archaeological excavations in Oltenia, Transylvania, Moldavia, in all
Romanian lands brought to surface church basements going back to the same
period and the early Middle Ages.

     According to Hungarian Byzantologist Gyula Moravcsik, "before the
Mongol's invasion of 1241 there were in the southern regions of feudal
Hungary 600 Eastern rite churches the location of which could be established
in almost 400 cases" (cf. I. D. Suciu, Monografia Mitropoliei
Banatului/Monograph on the Metropolitan Church of Banat, Timisoara, 1977,
p. 44).

     In the early 6th century the Ecumenical Patriarchate drew up a list,
known as Notitia Episcopatum, containing the metropolitan seats,
archiepiscopates and dioceses within its radius. It showed that there were
then 15 eparchies in Scythia Minor, the most important of them being the
Metropolitanate of Tomis. Ages-old evidence documents that in times of sharp
theological disputes the bishops of Tomis took care to save the Orthodox
Church and its faithful from any heresy. They also take credit for their noble
missionary work which to a certain extent also contributed to christianizing
the so-called barbarians.

     The ancient Romanian Church, especially in Dacia Pontica, kept itself
from the very beginning in close touch with the teachings of the Holy Fathers
whose works were used for the mass as well as in catecheses more than that,
it also tried to diffuse those works and hand them down to succeeding
generations.

     St. Sava "The Goth", a native of Cappadocia and coeval with St. Vasile
The Great, brought the most genuine and the strictest Orthodoxy to us. The
missionary activity of those illustrious Oriental Christians who had a
higher level of culture and addressed the Daco-Romans especially those in
Dacia, in Greek and Latin built lasting and long-standing links between the
church in the province, temporarily named "the land of Goths" and the
Christians of Asia Minor. The first patristic writing in the territories
north of the Danube, "Letter from Gothia's Church to the Cappadocia Church"
was compiled by Sava The Goth. It was an unquestioning testimonial of
Christian life in the Daco-Roman territory in the 4th century as well as of
the close ties the Christians here, the ministers of the Holy Church in the
present-day area of Buzau had with Constantinople and Cappadocia. When the
Goths' king Athananic started persecuting the Christians in 372, St. Sava was
martyrized by being drowned in the Buzau river. His relics were first taken
to Tomis where a Cappadocian, maybe a relative of St. Vasile the Great,
Iunius Soranus was governor and afterwards to Cappadocia. St. Vasile The
Great, archbishop of Caesarea and Cappadocia since 370, exchanged letters with
several of his compatriots in the Daco-Roman regions, whether brought there
by the Goths or come to the region in some other circumstances - e.g. Iunius
Soranus, governor of Scythia Minor - as well as with the Lord Bishop
Bretanmion (Vetranion) of Tomis. Their epistles were among the first patristic
writings that were known to our church which by that time was trying to
organize itself by setting up a metropolitan bishopric in Tomis and probably,
bishoprics in the region of Buzau and Oltenia. Those writings speak volumes
of the early stages of Daco-Roman Christianity they constitute a sacred
heritage, a documentary patristic argument as to the old age of the Romanian
Orthodox Church.

     In 398 St. Teotim I, Scythian by blood, that is Daco-Roman, was
archpriest of Tomis and chief of the Church of Scythia. By his defence of
St. John Chrysostom at the synod of Stejar in 403 (near Chalcedon), he
defended Orthodoxy itself. Christianity and Romanity preserved spiritual unity
and natural continuity all the time alive in the mind and soul of the
Daco-Roman population.

     Latin-language bishops Laurentius of Novae and Nicula of Remesiana were
other missionaries that developed a patristic activity among our forebears
in the administratively and politically separated Dacias. Laurentius of Novae
destined two homilies to the Getic and Daco-Roman Christian communities, in
an advanced stage after conversion, confessing to moral responsibility for the
sins they had perpetrated and for evil-doing. By his catechyzing among
the Getae he expanded the patristic literature and helped directly to shape
our forefathers' Orthodox conscience and their language.

     One can speak for sure about the Orthodox beginnings of Romanian
theology after St. Niceta of Remesiana (in 270 he was a bishop) who attended
to the clerical life of Christians in both Dacia Mediteranea and Dacia
Ripensis.

     By his involvement in Christological controversies, His Holiness Lord
Bishop John of Tomis, famous archpastor in Scythia Minor over 448-449,
proved himself a staunch supporter in his Latin writings of genuine
Orthodoxy. His patristic writings pointed to solid foothold of Romanization
in Dobrogea up to the point that even urban settlements with a large Greek
population like Tomis felt the need to have Greek patristic texts translated
into Latin.

     A century after St. John Cassianus, another high-standing personality,
Dionysius Exiguus (The Humble) appeared in the clerical community of Scythia
Minor After Constantinople, this Daco-Roman went to Rome in 496 where Pope
Gelasie asked for his services as he needed a good connoisseur of Latin and
Greek.

     Dionysius Exiguus translated Eastern patristic texts in Latin and had
close ties to Scythian monks like Achile, Ioan Maxentiu and Mauriciu as well
as to Eastern and Western ones. He also authored hagiographic, Christian
chronology and canon law texts. The paschal computation of 525-526 was highly
important to the Christian Church. He adjusted reckoning to the years of
the Christian era, explaining that years should be numbered since the birth
of Christ - key milestone for human existence - and historical facts dated
from that time on. By doing so, he became the father of the Christian era
which the whole world now observes. Such a universally shared boon of a humble
cleric originating in Dacia Pontica added to the Daco-Roman literature he
created a peerless accomplishment without any rival in any of the time's
European literatures in that very same field.

     Within a few centuries after Dacia's Romanization, Christianity imprinted
a specific identity on the Latin language spoken by our ancestors, "an island
of Latinity in a Slavic sea" that demonstrated amazing vitality. Christianity
and the Latin language constituted the genuine objective privilege of this
people's historical destiny and progress.

     The Slavs and the Bulgarians, migratory populations, are known to have
settled in nearby territories, to a lesser degree in the Daco-Roman lands
so it came that from the very beginning they felt the influence of the Eastern
Roman Empire and Christianity. Systematic promotion of Orthodoxy among
the Slavs and Bulgarians began in the 9th century, primarily thanks to the
work of two Greek brothers natives of Salonika, Cyril and Methodius, and of
their disciples. In 863 the Emperor of Byzantium and the Patriarch of
Constantinople had them sent as missionaries to Moravia in answer to Prince
Rostislav's request. In 864 Prince Boris of Bulgaria was baptized a Christian
in Constantinople in the meantime the Greek clergy had begun converting the
Bulgarians and structuring the Bulgarian Church. The Serbs embraced Orthodox
Christianism only after their reconciliation with Byzantium in 868. As
concerns the Russians, they became practicing Christians after the
baptizement of Knez Vladimir of Kiev in 987. The first archbishops of Kiev
were of Greek origin. The Hungarians were christianized by missionaries sent
from Rome some time around the year 1000 when Duke Vayk was baptized and
given the Christian name of Stephen. By the time of the Hungarians' settlement
in Pannonia, the creation of the first political-administrative structures
in Transylvania, Walachia, Oltenia, Maramures, the Banat and Oltenia had
reached a crucial stage. That type of political-administrative organization
also involved the Church and its hierarchy as the princely and the religious
seat were the same. There was a bishop's seat in the fortress of Dabica,
seat of Transylvanian prince Gelu while nearby Arad at Urbs Morisena, in the
vicinity of prince Glad's seat, there was an Orthodox monastery.

     In 1054 the Christian Church divided into Eastern and Western
Christendom. The Romanians remained faithful to the ecclesiastic authority of
Byzantium, being all the time in conflict with Rome's missionaries who used
christianized Hungarians for compelling the Romanian population to recognize
the Pope's authority, without hesitating to this end even to turn to arms.
Documents of the time labelled Orthodox bishops "pseudobishops" because they
were not Catholics and opposed conversion tendencies.

     The 14th century augured well for the development of the Romanian lands
they managed to keep distance from the influence of domination-hungry powers
and acquired an independent status. Byzantine elements and culture can be
noticed in large numbers in the Romanian culture and civilization of the time,
religious culture being the chief channel of penetration. Voivode Basarab I,
whose resounding victory over the Hungarian king at Posada in 1330 sealed
Walachia's independence, is credited with the erection of St. Nicholas' Church
of Curtea de Arges and of the princely church of Cimpulung. South of the
Carpathians, church unification developed in parallel to the political union
of past administrative structures (voivodeships and knezats). A single
hierarch having metropolitan rank was chosen in lieu of the larger number
of bishops in every small statal formation of the past. The first metropolitan
of Arges was Greek by birth, Vachint, who had been raised in a Greak
environment in 1352 Walachia's Voivode called him to leave Vicine (Dobrogea)
and come here and seven years later the Ecumenical Patriarchate anointed him
as chief religious leader of Arges. The mass, especially at princely courts
and in the major administrative centers, was in Greek. Greek was mainly
the language of religious music, and the chancellory of the metropolitan seat
wrote its letters to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Mt. Athos monasteries and
convents and churchmen on the other bank of the Danube in the same language.

     Serious concern was shown in the territories across the Carpathians with
organizing religious life. There were there descendants like Gelasie,
archbishop in 1376, of the Orthodox clerics of Dabica or those mentioned in
a papal letter of 1205. In spite of the Hungarian feudal state's
anti-Orthodox policy, about 200 monasteries that Gen. Bukow destroyed were
known to have survived there until the 18th century.

     In Moldavia, after several strained moments going as far as the
anathematization of its church, boyars and population, the Ecumenical
Patriarchate finally recognized the Metropolitan See in 1401.

     In the 14th century, the Romanian Orthodox Church had already come to a
well-organized structure, recognized as such by the other Orthodox churches.
Libraries with a vast stock of Christian classical literature were set up
at monasteries. Christian life developed in obeysance of the precepts of the
Holy Fathers and clear concern was shown to having religious strictures
observed.

     The fail of Byzantium in 1453 dealt a serious blow to our straight links
with the metropolis for half a century. Direct relations with the Ecumenical
Patriarchate were later resumed. Close links between the Orthodox Church of
the Romanian principalities and the great patriarchs of Constantinople
developed in the 16th century. In 1503 Voivode Radu the Great had the
ex-patriarch of Constantinople Nifon II brought to Walachia to reorganize
the Romanian church south of the Carpathians. That way, for a long time to
come the Romanian Orthodox Church was a hub of European Orthodoxy when the
Balkans were reeling under the yoke of the Ottomans.

     The scriptural and patristic religious culture played a crucial role in
preserving the unitary character of the ancient Romanian culture. The first
Romanian texts, dated to the 16th century, were Orthodox writings, patristic
texts among them as well, and they laid the basis of our national literature.
The Romanian people's unity and continuous life in the space of its birth
are largely due to the unity and continuity of the Orthodox faith, the most
solid and efficient spiritual binder then. Religious education raised and
fostered a spiritual mind-set free of any historical syncope. The Romanian
Orthodox spirituality, the way it got firmly implanted in the epoch in which
writing in Romanian vanquished every adversity, emerged and matured in the
Christian Daco-Roman spirit no matter that its acquisitions looked Latin,
Greek and later on Slavic.

     Though shattered and crippled by countless blows sustained at the hands
of an absurd and obtuse 45-year communist regime, faith and religious
life - genuine pillars of Romanian spirituality, of the society raised here at
the crossroads of European history at the cost of tremendous, toilsome
effort - could not perish into nothingness. Also from this angle, the December
Revolution was our salvation.

AUREL DAVID

Religion

     The December Revolution has brought Romania religious freedom. The
denominations are free to pursue their activity and benefit by State support
in the form of funds, material means and land to raise holy sites. The
post-May-elections government has created the State Secretariat for
Denominations having the mission of providing an adequate channel between the
State and the Church.

     Nearly one third of the salary of each category of ministers
(metropolitan, vicar, diocese councillor, priest, abbot, etc.) is funded from
the State budget. All faiths benefit by State financial aid save for
Neoprotestant churches (Baptists, Pentecostals, Seventh-Day and Evangelical
Adventists) whose religious doctrine prohibits them from getting financial aid
from State.

     As recently as December 31, 1989 the decree-law no. 9 repaired a flagrant
injustice: the abusive prohibition of the Greek-Catholic cult in 1948 was
annulled and the  Uniate Church was recognized as an equal of the other faiths
that Law permits in Romania. The decree-law no. 126 of April 12, 1990 orders
the return of all property that State had seized in 1948 and a mixed
commission of clerics representing the Orthodox Church and the Uniate
(Greek-Catholic) Church of Romania was given the task to decide on the
situation of churches and vicarages that had been taken over by the Orthodox
Church. At the same time, the State has pledged to assign land and money for
the construction of new churches.

     Early in 1990 our relations with the Holy See have been normalized the
Holy See has re-established all the six Roman Catholic dioceses and appointed
their titular bishops.

     There are in Romania 15 legal religions and cults which, save for the
Roman-Catholic and the Greek-Catholic Churches, have their own rules. They
are:

     1. The Orthodox Church of Romania: its faithfuls include the majority of
Romanians it is organized as an autocephalous Patriarchate whose head is His
Beatitude The Patriarch Teoctist Arapa-su 16 eparchies (7 archbishoprics and
9 bishoprics).

     2. The Uniate (Greek-Catholic) Church of Romania Romanian faithfuls 5
eparchies (1 archbishopric and 4 bishoprics).

     3. The Roman-Catholic Church: faithfuls of Romanian, Hungarian, German,
Slovak, Czeck, Croatian and Bulgarian descent 6 dioceses (1 archbishopric and
5 bishoprics).

     4. The Reformed Church: faithfuls of Hungarian origin 2 bishoprics.

     5. The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession: faithfuls of
German origin it is headed by a bishop.

     6. The Synodo-Presbyterian Church: Hungarian and Slovak faithfuls it is
organized as a superintendence.

     7. The Unitarian Church: Hungarian faithfuls 1 bishopric.

     8. The Ancient Rite Christian Church: Lippovan faithfuls 1
metropolitanate.

     9. The Armenian-Gregorian Church: Armenian faithfuls 1 archbishopric.

     10. The Baptist Church: faithfuls of Romanian, Hungarian and German
origin it is led headed by a President.

     11. The Penticostal Church: faithfuls of Romanian, Hungarian and German
descent it is headed by a President.

     12. The Seventh-Day Adventist Church: Roman and Hungarian faithfuls it
is led by a President.

     13. The Gospel Christian Church: Romanian and German faithfuls it is led
by a First Delegate.

     14 Islam: faithfuls of Turkish and Tartar descent it is headed by a
mufti.

     15. The Mosaism: it is led by a Chief Rabbi.

     There is also a Serbian Orthodox Vicariate based in Timisoara the
activity of which is permitted by Law.

     Along with religious denominations, several religious associations have
registered after December 1989 - e.g. the Religious Association of the Ancient
Rite Orthodox Church, the Evangelical Association (the Jehovah's Witnesses,
the Association for the Study of the Bible by Mail, a.s.o Baptist, Penticostal
and Gospel cults),