Clergy Out of Electoral Process in the Romanian Orthodox Church

The Holy Sinod of the Romanian Orthodx Church decided that the lay and the midd clergy [priests and deacons] will only have a consultative role in the process of electing Bishops.

This was a very hard decision to be taken but with a very littlle or [ better to say] no debate at all.

The early tradition of the Romanian Orthodox Church regarding the election of the Bishops was that the 2/3 lay and 1/3 clergy are participating in electoral process of hierarchs.

The only hierarch against the decision to take out the lay people was the Archbishop of Cluj, Bartolemeu Anania who criticize from the very beginnning the initiative to discuss this topic that leads the Romanian Orthodox Church in a corner of a Clericalist Institution, not anymore belonging to the faithfull.

In an interview given to BBC, Radu Preda, Theologian and Profesor at Babes-Bolyai University was also critical and called it " a Palace puch against the Church".

The decision makes Patriarch Daniel the last democratically elected hierarch in the Romanian Orthodox Church, while all new bishops will be viewd as representatives of the clericalist line in the Church.