Romanian Orthodox Episcopate / Archdiocese in America
Romanian Orthodox Episcopate / Archdiocese in America belongs to the Eastern Orthodox family of churches.
Governance: hierarchical.
Romanian Orthodox Episcopate / Archdiocese in America reports 31 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
Romanian Orthodoxy in America — one people under two jurisdictions, with a farm in Grass Lake, Michigan called the Vatra as its symbolic hearth.
Heritage
Romanian immigrants organized parishes from the early 1900s, and a Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America was founded in 1929, centered on the Vatra Românească — "the Romanian hearth" — in Grass Lake, Michigan. Communism split the community: the Episcopate refused Bucharest's oversight and eventually placed itself within what is now the Orthodox Church in America, while a separate archdiocese remained under the Romanian Patriarchate. The two bodies have negotiated toward reunion for decades and cooperate closely; our single record covers both. RCMS 2020 counts 31 parishes under this heading.
Theological family
Chalcedonian Eastern Orthodox; Romanian Orthodoxy is the church of the only majority-Orthodox nation speaking a Romance language — Latin in tongue, Byzantine in worship.
Who decides what
Two parallel structures: an episcopate within the Orthodox Church in America and an archdiocese under the Romanian Patriarchate — each episcopal, each with congresses of clergy and laity; a distinction invisible on most Sunday mornings.
What a first-time visitor would find
The Divine Liturgy in Romanian and English with Romanian chant; parishes anchor language schools and dance ensembles; newer post-1990 immigrant parishes lean Romanian while older Vatra-era parishes lean English.
What it has always cared about
The Vatra as gathering ground — its summer congresses shaped Romanian-American identity for a century; renewal by post-1989 immigration; growing veneration of the confessors of Romania's communist prisons.
Its gift to the wider church
A demonstration of diaspora patience: two jurisdictions of one people choosing cooperation over anathema while history sorts out what politics divided — and Romania's prison-confessor spiritual writing, now translated, reaching American readers through these parishes.
Commonly confused with
With each other, constantly — "Romanian Orthodox" in our data cannot say which of the two jurisdictions a parish belongs to; and with the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, in communion with Rome.
Range of views inside it
Range shows mainly in language, immigrant generation, and which of the two jurisdictions a parish calls home — a difference of administration, not faith.
A note from the mapmakers: This record covers two distinct jurisdictions our data cannot separate; nothing here may be asserted of a specific parish, including which jurisdiction it belongs to. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Romanian Orthodox parishes typically…" and yield to the parish's own materials.
Sources: Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America — History (Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of America) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · Orthodox Christians in America (John H. Erickson, Oxford University Press)
Where Romanian Orthodox Episcopate / Archdiocese in America churches are on the map
40 Romanian Orthodox Episcopate / Archdiocese in America congregations appear on The Church Map, across 16 states.
- New York — 10
- Illinois — 6
- Massachusetts — 4
- Ohio — 3
- Pennsylvania — 3
- Connecticut — 2
- Texas — 2
- Washington — 2
- California — 1
- Colorado — 1
More of the Eastern Orthodox story · Find these churches on the map