Moldova, Orthodoxy in

SCOTT M. KENWORTHY

The Orthodox Church in the post-Soviet Republic of Moldova is divided between two parallel jurisdictions belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow patriarchate) and the Romanian Orthodox Church. According to a 1989 census, 98.5 percent of Moldova’s 4.3 million citi­zens are nominal Orthodox Christians, though ethnically divided between Roma­nians (65 percent), Ukrainians (14 percent), Russians (13 percent), Gagauz, and Bulgarians.

The territory of the Republic of Moldova historically formed the eastern part of the medieval principality of Moldavia which had its own metropolitanate under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constan­tinople. In 1812 the Russian Empire took control over the eastern part of Moldavia between the Prut and Dnestr rivers, which came to be known as Bessarabia. In 1813 the Russian Orthodox Church established the diocese of Chisinau. The Russian state and church carried out a policy of Russification that included the imposition of Church Slavonic instead of Romanian as the litur­gical language.

With the collapse of the Russian Empire, Bessarabia voted in favor of unification with Romania in 1918. The diocese was then incorporated into the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1919. The diocese was raised to the status of a metropolitanate in 1928. The Romanian church and state conducted a counter-campaign of Romanianization in the interwar period, forcing Bessarabians to accept the Latin alphabet, the Gregorian calendar, and Romanian language for education and liturgy. In 1939 the Soviet Union occupied Bessarabia and formed the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Russian Orthodox Church established an archdiocese of Chisinau and Moldova. Soviet authorities restricted reli­gious life in Moldova as elsewhere in the Soviet Union.

The Republic of Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. The Moscow patriarchate continues to claim jurisdiction over the church in Moldova (with over 1,000 par­ishes), to which it granted autonomy and appointed an ethnic Romanian hierarchy, headed by Metropolitan Vladimir Cantarean. In 1992 the Romanian Ortho­dox Church established a jurisdiction known as the Bessarabian metropolitanate (with some 120 parishes). The Bessarabian metropolitanate justifies its existence not on territorial grounds, but by arguing that different ethnic groups have the right to separate (if parallel) church structures. Under pressure from Russia and the Rus­sian Church, the Moldovan government refused to recognize or register the

Bessarabian metropolitanate (with impor­tant implications for property ownership) until it was forced to do so by the European Court of Human Rights in 2002. Although there have been ongoing talks between the Russian and Romanian churches, no solu­tion has yet been reached to the problem of parallel jurisdictions in Moldova.

SEE ALSO: Romania, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Bespalko, V. (2002) “Bessarabskaia mitropoliia,” in Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, Vol. 4. Moscow: Pravoslavnaia entsiklopediia, pp. 724–5.

King, C. (1999) The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and the Politics of Culture. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.

Pacurariu, M. (1993) Bessarabia: Aspecte din istoria bisericii si a neamului Romanesc. Iasi: Trinitas.

Turcescu, L. and Stan, L. (2003) “Church-State Conflict in Moldova: The Bessarabian Metropolitanate,” Communist and Post­Communist Studies 36: 443–65.