Pope Francis to visit Romania

After exactly two decades, the majority Orthodox Romania will again receive the visit of a Pope

Bogdan Matei, 14.01.2019, 12:45

Pope Francis will make a three-day apostolic visit to Romania from the 31st of May to the 2nd of June following an invitation from President Klaus Iohannis and the Catholic Church in Romania, official sources from Bucharest and the Vatican have announced. The motto of the visit is “Lets walk together.

The pontiff will travel to the capital Bucharest, Iasi, the biggest city in the east of the country and home to a sizeable Roman-Catholic community, Blaj, in the centre, the spiritual capital of the Romanian Greek-Catholics and the Marian shrine in Sumuleu Ciuc, in the centre, in an area with a majority ethnic Hungarian population. The Pope has always urged for the rejection of egoism and for the centrality of the common good. He comes to Romania to foster unity and confirm the faith, according to the press office of the Holy See.

The bishop of the Roman-Catholic Diocese in Iasi, Petru Gherghel, said the pontiff is like “a father who comes to visit his sons. For the Greek-catholic cardinal Lucian Muresan, the president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Romania, the visit of Pope Francis to Romania will have a dominantly pastoral dimension, but it will also include an ecumenical aspect. The Romanian Ambassador to the Holy See Petru Liviu Zapartan told Radio Romanias correspondent in Rome that “the visit of the Pope will also undoubtedly create the opportunity for a dialogue with the Orthodox Church, which is the majority church in Romania, but also an opportunity to see that Romania is at the junction of some extremely diverse cultural spaces.

In Bucharest, the spokesman for the Patriarchate Vasile Banescu has expressed joy that the popes visit has been confirmed and has spoken about the good relationship between the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Roman-Catholic Church. According to the latest census, 86.5% of Romanias citizens identify themselves as Orthodox, only 4.6% as Roman-Catholic and less than 1% as Greek-Catholic.

The banning of the Greek-Catholic Church in Romania by the former communist regime immediately after WWII was made on the model and at the order of the Soviet occupiers. There was never an inter-faith war in Romania, or Inquisitional practices and burnings at the stake. It was therefore not by accident that in 1999, Romania became the first majority Orthodox country in history to receive the visit of a pontiff. Following an invitation by the then president Emil Constantinescu and the head of the Romanian Orthodox at the time Teoctist, Pope John Paul II visited Romania, where he was greeted with enthusiasm by hundreds of thousands of Romanians, who, regardless of their faith, saw in him “the most beloved pope in history and the man who played an enormous role in the collapse of communist dictatorships.

That visit is also mentioned by the international media such as the French Catholic daily paper La Croix and the Italian paper La Stampa, which note that Pope John Paul II called Romania “the Garden of the Mother of God.