The Report for 2004 on international religious freedom, compiled by the Office for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the USA, shows that some restrictions on religious liberty still exist in Romania, despite the fact that the government in general respects the right to such liberty upheld by the Constitution. News of the report is published on the official site of the Romanian Episcopal Conference, www.catholica.ro. While relations between the various religious groups are generally peaceful, the Romanian Orthodox Church is the report suggests in some sense hostile to the non-Orthodox faiths, which it accuses of “aggressive proselytism”. The Orthodox Church “continues to oppose the return to the Greek-Catholics of the churches it received from the State after the abolition of the Greek-Catholic Church by the Communists in 1948”. The efforts being devoted to the drafting of a new law on religious cults are being hampered by the tensions between Orthodox and Greek-Catholic communities and by the pressure being exerted by the Orthodox Church to be declared the national Church. The report also recalls the mixed Commission of dialogue between the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Greek-Catholic Church. “From a list of 2,600 confiscated churches, the Greek-Catholic Church has reduced its requests to less than 300. Only 15 churches have so far been returned. The report further points out that, in 2004, 17 final rulings of the tribunal for the return of churches to the Greek-Catholics have not been implemented due to non-cooperation on the part of the authorities.
