An Investigation About the Attitudes Towards Death and Cremation in Contemporary Romania

In recent decades, the growing popularity of cremation throughout the world has led to an increase in scientific interest surrounding the topic. The development of cremation has not followed the same path in all European countries and Romania is a particular case in this context. Very rarely the subject of public debate, cremation is at first regarded with hostility and negativism. The purpose of this article is to examine attitudes towards cremation in contemporary Romania in the context of more general attitudes towards death. A particular place in this paper is given to the historical analysis of cremation. The theological position of the Romanian Orthodox Church is also discussed, since this institution exerts a considerable influence on the ethical opinions of its members (the majority of Romanians). Our investigation is oriented towards the potentially influential opinions expressed in the public space. We performed in our study a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles about cremation published in the last 10 years, between 2002-2012.