Roman Catholicism in Moldova
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The Roman Catholic Church in Moldova is part of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and curia in Rome.
[edit] Statistics
Around 0.5% of the total population (around 20,000 people) of the Republic of Moldova is Catholic and the country forms a single diocese. The Episcop of Moldova is Anton Coşa, a Romanian-born Catholic of Csángó ethnicity.
Research has been made at the border between Hungary and Austria and at the extreme Orient in order to find traces of the origin of the Roman-Catholics - the so-called "Csangos". They said that Csango pronunciation is close to an idiom of the Hungarian language spoken in western Hungary by a group of Magyars who settled on the valleys of Rába and Repce between the 10th century and the 12th century. Supposedly, individuals from this region might have been sent to southeastern Transylvania for military needs and they were able to cross the Carpathian Mountains in order to settle in Moldavia. Another Hungarian researcher stated that the dialect of the Romanian language used by the Romanians from Moldavia is different from the one Csangos use. Most of these researchers have the tendency to consider that Csangos are exclusively Magyar-speaking people and those who speak Romanian do so as they have been assimilated. Such a deliberate attitude can only lead the research on a wrong path, especially considering there are very few pieces of information about the Csango origin.
Another source that feeds the assertions stated above is represented by the parish files, in which Magyar priests who were sent with Magyar catholic missions changed the names of their parishioners and of the places populated by Roman Catholics or even Orthodox people in Moldavia. The Romanians in Moldavia were subject to acts of Magyarisation once more in the 1950s. Those people were considered Magyar because of their Catholic religion.
So in some settlements with bilingual population such as Luizi – Calugara, Pustiana, Lespezi – Garleni, schools in which the teaching language is Magyar have been set up. In these schools especially trained in Magyar language teachers have been brought and they were paid according to the presence of their students in classes because they didn’t have anyone to teach. These teachers have been repeatedly banned from the communities they visited, the villagers manifesting a very hostile attitude towards the missioners, telling them: "Go home, we are Romanians!"
Immediately after the Romanian Revolution of 1989, the leaders of the representing parish of Harghita and Covasna made up their mind to get children from the Roman catholic villages in Moldavia to send them to study in Hungary, so that they would preach the Hungarian cause of neorevisionarism and panmagyarism. Afterwards another method was found and frequently used. It implied political delegations accompanied by Magyar-speaking media in order to document giving material help to poor villagers in exchange for joining the Magyar cause.
Relevant in this matter is the famous media scandal from Cleja (29 April 1995) known to the European authorities responsible with assuring the human rights. This scandal was one of the maximum tension moments between Romanian Csangos and the Magyar Csango Association from Moldavia with the headquarters in Sf. Gheorghe.
The attempts of claiming some Catholics in Moldavia as Magyar by religious constraint or by school did not work, Romanian language could not be banished because it is the native tongue of Csangos, the only one they ever knew since they settled to Moldavia. The efforts of the Magyars from Transylvania are presently useless activities as the language and the soul of these people cannot change. " No one sold their soul or country!" said the dean of the Roman catholic church in Bacau.
The conclusion of Dumitru Martinas’ thesis regarding the linguistic origin of Csangos can easily be guessed – Csangos are magyarised Transylvanian Romanians who became Catholics living in the proximity of the Székely. They emigrated to Moldavia in the 18th century and their history cannot be understood without knowing enough about the history of the Romanians from the Szekler county. The Csango history is nothing else than a painful episode, a scar in the soul of the Romanian history.
This was the reason why the principal conclusion of another international on the Csango matter, organized, this time, by Magyar interested circles, with a selective participation at Bacău (1 June - 2nd June, 2006), was that Dumitru Martinas activated in ex-security with almost all Roman catholic priests from Moldavia, those being the persons who objected the implementation of Magyar as a native tongue in the religious service. This was, as they could not object his arguments, they tried to discredit the author.
The contradictory discussions between Romanians and Hungarians concerning the origin of the catholics in Moldavia materialized for the first time in a decision taken by the government lead by Ion Antonescu in the 1940s, when Petre Ramneteanu was sent to settle this matter once and for all. He established what the genetic origin of the population was by using the hemaglutination of the blood method. After comparing the clues it came out that the Csangos have the same biological blood compound Romanians have.
The Romanian Csangos equally participated to the act of defending the country many of them among the peasants who fought in the army of Stephen III of Moldavia, in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, in World War I, World War II or even local village revolts.
Turning Romanian communities from Moldavia into servants of Magyars, Poles, Germans, Australians, Italians was pursued by convincing Romanians from Moldavia to become Catholics. The only ones who realized the danger were the local people who persistently resisted this switching their ethnic identity into Magyars. From 1225 to 1925 numerous missionaries from western countries have been sent here to preach Catholicism and in addition making the newly converted people embrace Magyar language and nation.
The natives were forced to subject to the will of the missionaries in order to avoid conflicts with the authorities who had political understandings which were more important than the well- being of the Christians.
After the East-West Schism of 1054 many Romanians from Transylvania, Pannonia, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia kept their catholic creed just as those from Moldavia did.
The first written advice sent to Pope Gregory IX dates from 14 November 1234 and it expresses the discontent that the Romanians from the Catholics bishopric of the Cumans refused to take the eucharist bread from a Magyar priest.
In this respect comes the refusal of the Romanians to become Magyar, rather turning towards Transylvanians or Saxons.
Romanian official census results in 1859 Catholics in Moldova: 58 881 of whom 37 825 (71,6%) where ethnic Hungarians In Bacau county 86,6% of the catholic population were ethnic Hungarians while in Roman county 94,6%
