How can Romania be a majority Catholic country instead of Orthodox?

- Bulgaria was never an existential threath for the Romanian principalities. What do you mean by Bulgaria? The first Bulgarian Tsardom? The seccond (which have an important Vlach component)? Bulgarians despotates/tsardoms which get conquered by Ottomans (they fought between themselves rather with others and were the Vlachs wich meddle in their affairs)? Modern Bulgaria?
This would necessarily prevent a conquest, especially since the Vlachs in question were probably were not those living in Romania (and the importance of the component is not that great, considering how the Vlachs are almost never mentioned after the first twenty years of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom). There is indeed evidence that parts of Romania were controlled by Bulgaria until the early 14th century. But I agree that conquering Romania was never a priority for Bulgarian rulers, they were focused in the south.
 
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is not discredited (and it would be a substantial exaggeration to call it puppetized) and there has been no mass conversion towards Catholicism. Also the Romanian Orthodox Church also collaborated with state security, quite possibly more extensively than the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
My bad, I guess I got it backwards. The Romanian Church was substantially more influenced (I remember it being a big story in the mid 2000s that they were finding proof about some clerics being collaborators, but for some reason I thought it was Bulgaria), and the Bulgarian church was the one that had a bunch of assassinations and attempts to intimidate them right after the beginning of Communism.

Either way, to make Romania Catholic, politics during the era of Communist oppression isn't nearly enough to wipe out hundreds of years of theological disagreement in practice or in doctrine, so that was probably a dead end anyways.
 
If the goal is simply to get more Catholics in Romania, no communist regime would certainly help. The Romanian Greek Catholic Church was fairly large prior to communist persecution. However, that still won't get you a majority Catholic Romania. For that you'd need something like a total Habsburg conquest of Romania from the Ottomans during the late 17th or early 18th century.
 
When the Hungarians start attacking Transylvania, the Transylvanian Romanian boyars decid to crown one of them (most probably Gelou) as Voivode and he succesfully stops the Hungarian expansion. After that, he is recognised as ruler by the Wallachian and Moldavian boyars and, to solidify his rule, he converts to Catholicism to be crowned by the Pope as "King of the Rumanians". Take into account the fact that Hungary hasn't converted to Catholicism yet so Romanians could be seen as defenders of Christianity in the face of the pagans, so the rest of Europe could turn it's attention to weaken and convert Hungary. I would love to write a TL on this POD in the future.
 
Last edited:
What are the geopolitical ramifications of a Catholic Romania?
Well a complete Habsburg control over Romania in the 18th century, means a stronger Aust Ian position in the Balkan and will likely result in the conquest of Ottoman Balkan before 1800. I suspect that Ottoman overlordship of the Balkans will result in a culture transformation of the region into one more Central European in nature and give them more experience with strong state structure, it will also mean the ethnic cleansing of the Balkan for Muslims, and large German minority population spread out over the region, especially in areas with large Muslim population before.
 
When the Hungarians start attacking Transylvania, the Transylvanian Romanian boyars decid to crown one of them (most probably Gelou) as Voivode and he succesfully stops the Hungarian expansion. After that, he is recognised as ruler by the Wallachian and Moldavian boyars and, to solidify his rule, he converts to Catholicism to be crowned by the Pope as "King of the Rumanians". Take into account the fact that Hungary hasn't converted to Catholicism yet so Romanians could be seen as defenders of Christianity in the face of the pagans, so the rest of Europe could turn it's attention to weaken and convert Hungary. I would love to write a TL on this POD in the future.
Plus there are still the Pannonian Romance speakers.
 
Well a complete Habsburg control over Romania in the 18th century, means a stronger Aust Ian position in the Balkan and will likely result in the conquest of Ottoman Balkan before 1800. I suspect that Ottoman overlordship of the Balkans will result in a culture transformation of the region into one more Central European in nature and give them more experience with strong state structure, it will also mean the ethnic cleansing of the Balkan for Muslims, and large German minority population spread out over the region, especially in areas with large Muslim population before.

I don't see the Habsburgs, with total control over Romania, going further then Belgrade, because they would be overoverstreched( you can't run Athens from Vienna).
 
Top