Vatican and Romania Will Exchange Envoys : Eastern Europe: The move continues a trend toward warmer ties between the church and former Soviet satellites.

Completing its official re-entry into Eastern European countries with major Roman Catholic populations, the Vatican on Tuesday announced resumption of diplomatic relations with Romania.

A terse one-paragraph announcement ended a 40-year rupture begun with the triumph of communism in Romania after World War II. Relations will be resumed at full ambassadorial level, the Vatican said, without naming the envoys to be exchanged.

The return of an official Vatican presence in Eastern Europe has quickly followed the fall of communism there. The process began last July when relations were restored with Pope John Paul II’s native Poland.

So far this year, relations have been resumed with Hungary, which the Pope will visit in 1991, and with Czechoslovakia, which he visited last month. Official ties have also been resumed with the Soviet Union, although not yet at ambassadorial level, in the wake of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s visit to the Vatican last December.

There is no sign yet of renewed links between the Holy See and Bulgaria and Albania, but neither has ever had full diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Both are officially atheist, and neither has a large Roman Catholic population.

In Romania, relations were broken by an insurgent Communist government in July, 1950, which gave the Vatican nuncio 72 hours to leave the country. They are being resumed by the government that succeeded dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed last Christmas Day during a popular uprising.

By the Vatican’s count, there are 1.4 million Roman Catholics in Romania today, and some 1.5 million followers of the Byzantine or Eastern rite affiliated with Rome.

Of Romania’s 23 million residents, about 18 million are members of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which was tolerated by and cooperated closely with the government under Communist rule that began in 1948.

As in the Soviet Union, Byzantine rite churches in Romania were officially incorporated into the Orthodox Church under Communist rule, and Orthodox bishops seized the cathedrals of Roman Catholic bishops, according to the Catholic Almanac. More than 50 priests were executed, and another 200 died in prison.

In March, John Paul named seven Latin rite bishops and five Byzantine rite bishops to restore the Romanian church hierarchy to its pre-Communist level. The decision to renew relations was made during a visit to Bucharest last month by Archbishop Angelo Sodano, the Holy See’s secretary for foreign relations.