The growing evangelical community continues to seek official recognition and participation in the religious affairs section of the Council of Ministers. There was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom during the period covered by this report. There were no reports of religious detainees or prisoners. There were no reports of the forced religious conversion of minor U.S. citizens who had been abducted or illegally removed from the United States, or of the Government's refusal to allow such citizens to be returned to the United States. Societal Attitudes Relations among the various religious groups are generally amicable, and tolerance is widespread.
Society is largely secular.
Intermarriage among religious groups is extremely common. There are amicable relations between the three main religions in the country. At the beginning of 2000, the Orthodox and the Catholic churches wrote, for the first time in their history, a joint declaration on the beginning of the new millennium and the celebration of 2000 years of Christianity. The Archbishop of the country's Orthodox Church has noted incidents in which the Orthodox and their churches or other buildings have been the targets of vandalism. There were reports that a number of Orthodox churches in the south were burned.