In 2022, the National Catechism Program “Christ Shared with Children” continues in Romania, under which 990 parish catechesis centers are organized with specialist teachers drawn to them.
The action of the large-scale educational project “Choose the School”, financed by the European Union, with which the Romanian Orthodox Church supports children at risk of dropping out of school, continues. The project is implemented through the Operational Program “Human Capital” and this is its tenth edition in the country. Now it is aimed at stimulating the participation in the education system of children whose parents have gone to work abroad. The program is implemented by the Metropolitanate of Moldova and Bukovina and three million euros have been spent on it.
In the academic year 2022-2023, 6,200 teachers teach the subject “Religion” in Romanian schools, of which 4,468 are full-time teachers in this specialty, 195 full-time teachers in other specialties who have extra hours in “Religion” and 1,537 substitutes. Of these teachers, 1,178 are clerics, 4,909 are laymen with theological education and 113 are laymen with other education. 568 are newly admitted teachers and 228 are doctors of theology. There are 42 experts in “Religion” working in the district school inspectorates, of which 40 have theological training and two – with another.
There are twenty-five theological seminaries with various specializations – Orthodox theology, theology of cultural heritage, religious tourism, church music, philology, natural sciences, social sciences, etc. In the 2021-2022 academic year, 4,064 high school students are enrolled in them, including 86 foreigners.
In the Romanian Patriarchate there are 11 theological faculties (Bucharest, Iași, Sibiu, Craiova, Cluj, Constanta, Targovishte, Pitesti, Alba Iulia, Arad and Oradea) and three theological departments included in other faculties (Timişoara, Galați and Baia Mare). During the academic year 2021-2022, 373 teachers worked in higher theological education, of which 76 were professors.
The Romanian Patriarchate also reported an activation of its activity in the diaspora
The Romanian Patriarchate published data on the state of its structures in the diaspora for 2022. Outside Romania, the Romanian Orthodox Church has four metropolitans and nine bishoprics under its jurisdiction. They number a total of 1,483 parishes (compared to 1,472 in the previous year). Romanian monastic communities are 71 (67 – for 2021), and Romanian clerics in the diaspora are a total of 1,379 (1,311 – for 2021).
The Patriarchate reports an increase in the number of baptisms, weddings and conversions to Orthodoxy:
• 25,282 baptisms, compared to 24,643 in 2021;
• 5,758 weddings (3,605 – in 2021);
• 3,692 burials (2,734 – in 2021);
• 721 accepted into Orthodoxy (433 – in 2021);
• 34 returned to Orthodoxy (27 – in 2021).
As a leading activity for the past year, “the consistent spiritual and material support provided to tens of thousands of refugees from Ukraine in the Romanian parishes abroad” is highlighted.
Romanian priests have represented their church in a number of international theological forums and participated in the general church dialogue, such as: the workshop “Fighting pandemics through the experience of faith” organized by the Center for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, UK (March 25, 2022 .); The Fifth Theological Meeting of Halki Island on Ecology, Istanbul (June 8-11, 2022); The twenty-eighth meeting of the International Scientific Congress “Apostle Paul and Crisis Management”, Veria, (June 26-29, 2022) and others.
A report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that the Romanian diaspora is the fifth largest in the world, comprising approximately 3.6 million Romanian migrants. The most Romanians are in Italy (over one million), Germany (680,000) and Spain (573,000).
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