Ortodossia romena, Covid-19 e il “virus della modernità”

The Covid-19 pandemic embodied a major contemporary challenge for Orthodox churches. Indeed, they were called to adapt upon to health urgencies and to comply with inedited state regulations. In the article, we focus on the Romanian Orthodox Church and analyze qualitative material collected in two parishes in Bucharest. From the results, it appears the Romanian Orthodox Church nurtured a significant intransigence in dealing with modernity’s issues related to the pandemic context, especially resisting to the temporary closure of places of worship and the organic transposition of health regulations. We study the above processes within the frame of the contentions between the societal authority of religion and that of modern science, while at the same time considering those ones shaped by the state and the notion of nature. In short, this research would like both to shed new light on ancient tensions of Eastern Orthodoxy with modernity and to grasp some dynamic traits of this religion. Beyond the defensive Orthodoxy’s discourses, the examination of its liturgical space revealed a complex social setting marked by negotiations.