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Russia amass a small but tightly bounded Catholic community who�s powerful faith has often been compared
to the world�s first Christians. Though making up just 13% of Romania�s two million Catholics they produce
100% of its clergy.
Today churches in the region of Moldavia are overflowing with worshipers. The church in the village
Sabaoani accommodates 1000 people though Sunday Mass fills so quickly that crowds are forced outside where they bear freezing temperatures to listen to the hymns seeping out through the walls.
�The faith here is so strong you can feel God,� commented a visitor during morning service.
Clergymen suggest that this strong faith always existed in East Romania though they will admit that
after a century of suffocating communist persecution new life has breathed into the church.
limiting its movement within its own four walls. Fr. Cornel Cadar from the Diocese in Iasi describes the
communist policy as �obey or be destroyed.�
Those that resisted ended up in chains like the Bishop of Iasi Anton Durcovici, who ultimately succumbed to
torture inside the �Black Room� at Sighetu political prison. Sighetu became the coliseum of many Romania�s
holy men and who�s bodies have still not been recovered.
But who are these 260,000 Catholics in the East of Romania and where did they come from?
�We have always been here,� says Fr Cadar. Christianity is believed to have been brought to
Romania by the Apostle Andrew in the 1st century. Though the schism of 1054 split the church between
East and West many here in Romania remained faithful to the Pope.
but beginning in the 18th centuries a huge wave of Catholics, who were escaping their own persecutions in
Transylvania on the Western side of the mountains, began seeping in and repopulating the region.
These immigrants who possessed their own dialect and traditions were quickly referred to as �Chango�.
�I prefer not to be called that,� scolds Silva Domoc from Sabaoani, the largest catholic settlement in
Romania. �This is a term other people gave us. We don�t call ourselves this. We are Romanian Catholics.�
To Catholics here in Eastern Romania the term �Chango� is an insulting term that labels them �foreigners�.
.It�s a word of Hungarian origin that was put on the new immigrants from the fallacious logic that since
Hungarians are Catholic - these Romanian Catholics are Hungarian.
A story in a Bucharest newspaper sums it up. �Seeing a group of black students coming out of a Roman-Catholic church a woman exclaimed in bewilderment, �What, now the black people are Hungarians too.��
Today, as modernization slowly dissolves the old traditions also with it goes the Chango identity.
Ms Tanaru still believes in the traditions and has been conducting a personal crusade to preserve some of
the old ways.
Stored away inside her closets she has collected a stock pile of hand woven traditional clothing and
artifacts, some dating back 200 years. Her plans of creating a performing arts program dissolved after
realizing that the old traditions just couldn�t compete with the excitement of modern television and
hip hop.
Even the most basic traditions, which had survived centuries of wars and famines are fading away. Ms.
Tanaru recalls how Changos used to preserve a traditional gown which was never used till the day they folded their hands over their chest. It is a custom that dates back to ancient times and the belief
that the dead will resurrect wearing the garments they were buried in.
�My grandmother was a very modern women,� Ms. Tanaru remembers. �When she died we dressed her in her traditional gown with a modern set of clothes over it She loved her modern clothes and we thought to give her the opportunity to choose which she would prefer to wear in the after life.�
Officially, the average net income stands at $150 per month, but people in the streets of Moldova laugh at
this exaggeration.