Religion in Romania

"Romania had reaped a handsome territorial dividend from her wartime sufferings, acquiring Bessarabia (from Russia), Bukovina (from Austria), southern Dobruja (from Bulgaria) and Transylvania (from Hungary). But the effect was that nearly one in three inhabitants of the country was not Romanian at all: 8 per cent were Hungarians, 4 per cent Germans, 3 per cent Ukrainians - in all there were eighteen ethnic minorities recorded in the 1930 census. The preponderance of non-Romanians was especially pronounced in urban areas. Even the Romanians themselves were divided along religious lines, between the Uniate Christians of Transylvania and the Orthodox Christians of the Romanian heartland, the Regat."

"[Mădălina Dumitru in her book "The Broken Flight"] raises the difficult question of why [the Movement of Spiritual Integration into the Absolute] was subject to such extraordinary persecution in Romania. She identifies two reasons. One is the Communist legacy. Alternative spirituality and its leaders, including [MISA's founder Gregorian] Bivolaru, started being persecuted during the Ceaușescu regime, and several police officers and prosecutors of Communist times kept their positions in democratic Romania. The second is the attempt of corrupted politicians, including social-democrat Prime Minister , who ended up in jail, to divert the public’s attention from political scandals by having the media focusing on “cults” in general and the juicy sex-connected story of MISA in particular. Politicians were also accused of tolerating very real human trafficking of minors forced into prostitution, and prosecuting MISA for its non-existing human trafficking gave the impression they were “doing something” about the issue."