Seuca became a known place for pilgrimage due to a blind Gypsy woman's public visions about the Virgin Mary in the first years of the new millennium. The author presents both the history of the ethnical and confessional co-existence in the village and the economic and social problems which affected the whole community. Then, the attitudes towards the apparition of the different denominations are highlighted by also presenting the way the seer attempts to question the different denominational opinions. The legitimating strategies of a Gypsy woman significantly influenced the aspects of the vision of the Virgin Mary from Seuca. In the history of Seuca, we find the practice of ethnic groups making well-defined boundaries between them, functioning as important parts of the communities. The artificial change of the ethnic structure during the Communist dictatorship changed the patterns of relations between the ethnic groups and made ethnic coexistence more problematic. The local parish that tried to expropriate the Marian apparitions has successfully integrated their messages into the ideology of ethnic reconciliation. The traditional onto- logical systems of religion in the communities still work and the frequent crossing of the ethnic and denominational boundaries have also promoted the strategies of the Church. In addition, the apparitions in Seuca earned the village a distinguished reputation in the region where enormous changes have taken place and where people have been forced to develop more complex strategies, or ways of life, without any pre-existing concrete models.
The study analyzes the changes in the religious and social life of a Roma Pentecostal community in an ethnically mixed village, and the relationship between migration practices and conversion to Pentecostalism. In the fi rst part of the study, the author presents the Roma community and outlines the circumstances under which Pentecostalism emerged among them. Thereafter, the two types of migration practiced by the Roma will be presented: migration focused mainly on northern European countries, based on panhandling, and migration aimed at longer term residence in the countries of Western Europe. The analysis points to the importance of foreign migration-related income in the changing situation of the Roma, as well as the role of the Pentecostal religion in the modernization changes that began in the Roma community.
The paper aims to describe phenomenas of modernization in Moldavian Csango villages in the context of religiosity. It interprets the most significant shifts in the life forms and traditional religiosity, the change of central values, tendencies of secularization and the emergence of sectarianism. The author argues that the religious experience gradually evades community and (Church) legitimation, so that the ever larger individualization of religious experiences and conceptualization leads to the pluralization of worldviews. The impersonalization of social control, the changing norms that affect everyday life, the role change of religious values, the individualization of communities, basically the transforming forces of modernization on society disable the catholic church to fully integrate the Csango village population, who in rising numbers attend new teachings that offer an updated worldview, as well as a brand new set of community/religious norms. The author argues, that sectarianism/sectarianization is a part of modernizational strategies, and that as a consequence of transnational life forms, sects have become part of social mobility
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