Eastern Orthodoxy in
Arad in
Iași, the largest Orthodox church in Romania 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. Apart from the mainstream
Eastern Orthodox Church, other
eastern orthodox groups exist in the country among which is the
True Orthodox denomination
Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Romania and the
Old Believers of the
Lipovan Orthodox Old-Rite Church.
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. 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. 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. The
Romanian Orthodox Church continues to claim many of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church's properties. 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.
Calvinism The
Reformed Church in Romania is an exclusively Hungarian-speaking denomination with some 495.000 members, making it the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Other Calvinist denominations with a presence in the country include the
Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central and Eastern Europe, which has 13 congregations in Romania and missionary congregations from various foreign denominations such as the
URCNA,
IPC and
PCB.
Other magisterial protestants The
Church of England has a
congregation in Bucharest and the
United Protestant Church of France has one in
Iași.
Evangelicals Evangelicals (or sometimes called "neo-Protestants" in Romania) are mostly identified with the
Baptists,
Plymouth Brethren, Pentecostals (both
Apostolic and
Assemblies) or members of various other
independent churches. Not to be confused with any of the above, the
Evangelical Church of Romania (0.08%), is an indigenous
Eastern Protestant denomination with some similarities to the
Plymouth Brethren.
Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses were banned and persecuted in some occasions in Romania from 1948 to 1989. 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, but some of them still rejected certain doctrinal changes and preferred their autonomy, forming The True Faith Association of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1992. Nowadays, Romania is the only country in the world to have 2 different Jehovah's Witnesses organizations.
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.
Hinduism 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,
Brașov,
Timișoara,
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 of
Constanța Although the number of adherents of
Islam is relatively small, Islam enjoys a 700-year tradition in Romania particularly in
Northern Dobruja, a region on the
Black Sea coast which was part of the
Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries (ca. 1420–1878). 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. 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. although there are a few ethnic Romanian converts to Islam who even established
a mosque in 2014. Since 2007, there are Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers coming to Romania, who are mostly Muslims. In Romania there are about 80
mosques. 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, with a status similar with that of the other denominations officially recognized by the Romanian state. 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.
Judaism in
Târgu Mureș. 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. 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.
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, 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. One of the most prominent Zalmoxian groups is the
Gebeleizis Association (). 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.
Irreligion is much lower in Romania than in most other European countries; one of the lowest in Europe.
Other and unknown In the
2021 Romanian census, 13.94% of respondents refused to state a religious affiliation or were not asked this question. More accurately, about 9% of the population refused to declare their affiliation, and about 5% simply were not asked this question (they were missing, so their data was indirectly recorded, and it did not include religion). == Attitudes towards religion ==