The union of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1859 and full Romanian independence, recognized internationally in 1878, created a modern state seeking, as other newly independent Orthodox nations had, a church answerable to its own authorities rather than to Constantinople. The Ecumenical Patriarchate recognized Romanian autocephaly in 1885, and the church's status was raised further in 1925, when Patriarch Miron Cristea became the first head of a newly established Romanian Patriarchate, reflecting the country's expanded post First World War borders and the union of Orthodox populations from Transylvania and other formerly Austro-Hungarian territories into a single Romanian church.
Communist rule after 1947 subjected the church to close state supervision, infiltration by the secret police and, in a step distinct from most other Soviet bloc states, a working accommodation in which the church hierarchy largely avoided the open confrontation that marked, for instance, Ukrainian Greek Catholic suppression, a compromise still debated within Romania as either pragmatic survival or excessive collaboration.
Since the 1989 revolution the church has rebuilt rapidly, becoming again the country's dominant religious institution and completing the immense People's Salvation Cathedral in Bucharest, consecrated in 2018 as one of the largest Orthodox church buildings in the world.