Latin-rite Catholics in Romania are members of an ethnic Hungarian minority, a small community surrounded by Orthodox Christians in one of Europe’s most religiously observant societies. Catholics live mostly in homogenous enclaves in the eastern part of the Transylvania region. There is a sense that these areas are a kind of Catholic homeland. There is a widely-known legend (believed by many ordinary Catholics to be historically true) that the Virgin Mary appeared to a group of Catholics defending this region against an invading Protestant army. An annual pilgrimage to the site of this apparition helps bolster the sense that Catholicism has a “home” in this region. Read more...
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Marc Roscoe Loustau, "Risking a Miracle: Transcendentally-Oriented Improvisation and Catholic Charismatics’ Involvement in a Transylvanian Canonization," The Journal of Contemporary Religion 31 (2016): 335-50, https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2016.1206229.
Marc Roscoe Loustau, Hungarian Catholic Intellectuals in Contemporary Romania: Reforming Apostles, Contemporary Anthropology of Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
National Demographics
Catholic Demographics
These statistics are derived from the Vatican's official publication, Statistical Yearbook of the Church 2020 (Vatican City: Librera Editrice Vaticana, 2022). The numbers may differ from data reported by other sources on this site.