The majority (61 percent) of Romanians in this mostly Orthodox country said in a public opinion poll they find the visit of Pope Francis important. The poll was conducted by polling agency INSCOP, while the name of the client may sound somewhat strange in this context: it was the Laboratory of Cyber Warfare and Strategic Communication of the Romanian Academy.
The poll also showed that only 23.3 percent said the visit not important for Romania and 15.7 had no opinion or did not wish to share it. 81 percent of Romanians are Orthodox Christians.
President Klaus Iohannis of Romania formally invited Pope Francis to visit the country in May 2015 and after nearly four years of discussions, the Holy See has announced that the visit will take place from May 31 to 2 June, and that the pope will visit three cities, plus a pilgrimage site in the heart of Transylvania. This is the second papal visit to Romania – but during the first such event Pope John Paul II only went to the capital, București.
The latter place, Csíksomlyó is where, each year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims come to Székelyföld, to the Csíksomlyó Saddle, on Pentecost Saturday to participate in the largest religious and ritual event of Catholics in the Carpathian Basin, on the Pentecost Pilgrimage of Csíksomlyó/Șumuleu Ciuc.
The INSCOP poll was conducted between April 12-Mai 3 on a representative sample of of 1,050 Romanians and has an error margin of 3 percent.
Title image: Pope Francis during a recent visit to Bulgaria (source: Photographic Service L’Osservatore Romano)
