The Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs in Romania is not now a specialized body of the central public administration that develops and ensures the application of cultural, artistic and cinema policies and strategies. In the field of religious affairs, the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs has worked for maintaining good relations with all the religious groups in the country in compliance with the current legislation.

The ministry includes a Secretariat for Religious Affairs that subordinates the Religious Relations, Assistance, Education divisions. The Secretariat for Religious Affairs through the Religious Relations Division committed itself beginning with the year 2003 to support the historic Churches as regards the protection and museum presentation of the national religious cultural heritage. Meanwhile ecclesiatic museums of several religious groups are organized for presenting religious heritage exhibits. Under the General Secretary of the Council of Europe over the last years a program has unfolded aimed at training the personnel of historic monuments and of religious collections entitled "The Religious Heritage of Romania - a European spiritual landmark". Over the last years a consistent number of trainees from the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Roman-Catholic Church and the Romanian Church united with Rome (Graeco-Catholic), the Unitarian Church, the Old Rite Christian Church, the Mosaic Cult, the Muslim Cult etc. The lectures were held by history and religious art specialists - academics, curators, restorers, researchers.

The State Secretariat for Religious Affairs in collaboration with the Institute for Cultural Memory (cIMeC) initiated a project for the archiving of the places of worship in Romania, started in 2003 and continued in the following years.

The objectives of the project have been the first database record of all the religious buildings on Romania's territory, historic monuments and new constructions, as well as a digital image archive. This unique information provides an image upon the number and territorial representations of the places of worship including information on the identification, location, patron, construction date, religious affiliation etc. By the July 2011 the database contained more than 18.400 entries.

The project is developing by completing the database, both quantitatively and qualitatively, by collaborating with the owners of the places of worship.

In parallel with the computer record of the places of worship in Romania, for preparing the recording of the national mobile religious cultural heritage, in compliance with Law no. 182/2000, with the same collaboration, we conducted the record of the the heritage of Căldăruşani Monastery in 2003, and beginning with the year 2004 the record of the heritage of the Romanian Orthodox Church Patriarchate.

For further information,
Project Manager- Florentina Udrea (Manea) - florentina@cimec.ro
The Secretariat for Religious Affairs - http://www.culte.ro/