Misplaced Pages

#868131

158-922: History of Christianity in Ukraine The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church ( UGCC ) is a major archiepiscopal sui iuris ("autonomous") Eastern Catholic church that is based in Ukraine . As a particular church of the Catholic Church , it is in full communion with the Holy See . It is the third-largest particular church in the Catholic Church after the Latin Church and the Syro-Malabar Church . The major archbishop presides over

316-734: A Patriarch ) of the UAOC and Metropolitan Oleksiy (Hromadsky) of the Ukrainian Autonomous Orthodox Church concluded an Act of Union, uniting the two national churches at the Pochayiv Lavra. Later German occupation authorities and pro-Russian hierarchs of the Autonomous Church convinced Metropolitan Oleksiy to remove his signature. Metropolitan Oleksiy was murdered in Volhynia on May 7, 1943, by

474-610: A cross and prophesied the foundation of a great Christian city. Belief in the missionary visit of Andrew became widespread by the Middle Ages , and by 1621, a Kiev synod had declared him the "Rus'-apostle". Titus , a disciple of Andrew, is also venerated in Ukrainian churches, as are three " Scythian " disciples, Saints Ina, Pina and Rima, who accompanied him to Kiev. Both the 18th-century Church of St Andrew and an earlier structure from 1086 it replaced were purportedly built on

632-610: A metropolinate under the Bishop of Constantinople at Dorus in northern Crimea around the year 400. A bishop's seat had also existed since 868 across the Strait of Kerch , in the ancient city of Tmutarakan . The Polans and the Antes cultures, located so close to the Crimea, surely became familiarized with Christianity by this time. The relics of Pope Martin were allegedly retrieved by

790-479: A patriarch , which met with strong support as well as controversy. Pope Paul VI demurred, but compromised with the creation of a new title of major archbishop (assigned to Yosyf Slipyi on 23 December 1963 ), with a jurisdiction roughly equivalent to that of a patriarch in an Eastern church. This title has since passed to Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky in 1984 and thereafter to Lubomyr Husar in 2000 and Sviatoslav Shevchuk in 2011; this title has also been granted to

948-465: A catch-all term for Eastern Catholics under its rule until 1918. The Ruthenian population of Galicia and Bukovyna began to increasingly identify themselves as Ukrainian, emphasizing the connection to Ukrainians in the Russian Empire, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The papal statistical yearbook Annuario Pontificio began referring to the church as Ukrainian from 1912. In the wake of

1106-698: A church was already established in Kiev, St. Elijah's, modeled on a church of the same name in Constantinople. This gradual acceptance of Christianity is most notable in the Rus'-Byzantine Treaty of 945, which was signed by both "baptized" and unbaptized Rus'", according to the text included in the Primary Chronicle. Christianity acceptance among the Rus' nobility gained a vital proponent when Princess Olga ,

1264-624: A common faith based on Eastern Christianity . This tradition is represented in Ukraine by the Byzantine Rite , the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, which have been at various historic times closely aligned with Ukrainian national self-identity and Byzantine culture . Being officially eliminated since the end of World War II , the recent revival of Ukrainian national religions started just before dissolution of

1422-614: A department of the Holy See began producing a different publication called Hierarchy of the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church Worldwide ( Italian : Gerarchia della Santa Chiesa Cattolica Apostolica Romana in Tutto L'Orbe ), which took the title Annuario Pontificio in 1860 but ceased publication in 1870. This was the first yearbook published by the Holy See itself, but its compilation

1580-746: A fierce sense of loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty. When Polish rebels briefly took control of Lviv in 1809, they demanded that the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Antin Anhelovych , substitute Napoleon 's name in the Divine Liturgy for that of Austrian Emperor Francis I . Anhelovych refused, and was imprisoned. When the Austrians retook control over Lviv, Anhelovych was awarded the cross of Leopold by

1738-537: A language closer to the vernacular Old East Slavic language than the Greek used to worship in Constantinople, or Latin in the west. In response to local disputes with clerics of the Latin Church, Cyril and Methodius appealed in person to the Bishop of Rome in 867, bringing with them the relics of Pope Martin from Chersonesos. Their labors and request were met with approval, and their continued efforts planted

SECTION 10

#1732765593869

1896-640: A minority of Christians in the country. Andrew the apostle is believed to have travelled up the western shores of the Black Sea , to the area of present-day southern Ukraine, while preaching in the lands of Scythia . Legend (recorded in the Radziwiłł Chronicle ) has it that he travelled further still, up the Dnieper River , until he came to the location of present-day Kiev in AD 55, where he erected

2054-654: A new Metropolitan in Halych in 1303. The religious affairs were also ruled in part by a Metropolitan in Navahrudak , (present-day Belarus ). In the 15th century, the primacy over the Ruthenian Orthodox Church was moved to Vilnius , under the title " Metropolis of Kiev and all Rus' ". One clause of the Union of Krevo stipulated that Jagiello would disseminate Catholicism among Orthodox subjects of

2212-695: A representative from the Black Sea area, the "head of the Scythian bishopric", was present at the First Council of Nicaea in 325, as well as the First Council of Constantinople in 381; it has been surmised that this representative would have to have been Bishop Cadmus of the Bosporan Kingdom. Ostrogoths , who remained on present-day Ukrainian lands after the invasion of the Huns , established

2370-575: A small group of priests started to proclaim a reunion with Orthodoxy. The Soviet state organized in 1948 a synod in Lviv, where the 1596 Union of Brest was annulled, thereby breaking the canonical ties with Rome and transferring under the Moscow Patriarchate. In Transcarpathia, the reigning Greek Catholic bishop, Theodore Romzha , was murdered [7] and the remaining priests were forced to return their Church to Orthodoxy. This move's acceptance

2528-420: A thousand Ukrainian Uniate parishes were taken over by Orthodox priests. According to Larry Wolff of American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the years of Polish partitions were "years of lawless bullying in Ukraine, which remained in a state of suspended irregularity while Catherine fought her wars and negotiated the partition". Following the failure of Kościuszko Insurrection and the final partition of Poland ,

2686-608: Is known that the Slavic population of western Ukraine (likely the White Croats ) had accepted Christianity while under the rule of Great Moravia . However, it was the East Slavs who came to dominate most of the territory of present-day Ukraine, beginning with the rule of the Rus' , whose pantheon of gods had held a considerable following for over 600 years. Following the 860 assault on Constantinople by Rus' forces under

2844-729: Is mostly in Italian. The 2015 edition had more than 2,400 pages and cost €78 . According to the Pontifical Yearbook of 2022 , the number of Catholics in the world increased to 1,359,612,000 at the end of 2020. A yearbook of the Catholic Church was published, with some interruptions, from 1716 to 1859 by the Cracas printing firm in Rome, under the title Information for the Year ... ( Italian : Notizie per l'Anno ... ) From 1851,

3002-666: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania , of which Ukraine was a part. The opposition from the Ostrogskis and other Orthodox magnates led to this policy being suspended in the early 16th century. Following the Union of Lublin , the Polonization of the Ukrainian church was accelerated. Unlike the Catholic Church, the Orthodox church in Ukraine was liable to various taxes and legal obligations. The building of new Orthodox churches

3160-571: The Holy Roman emperor Otto the Great to send missionaries into Kievan Rus. Adalbert , a Latin missionary bishop from Germany, was sent, but his missions and the priests who missionized along with him, were stopped. Most of the group of Latin missionaries were slain by pagan forces sent by Olga's son, Prince Svyatoslav , who had taken the Crown from his mother. Christianity became dominant in

3318-793: The November Uprising , which the Uniate Church officially supported. However, the uprising failed, and the Russian authorities were quick to respond to its organisers and areas of strongest support. The outcome was that the Uniate synod's members were removed along with most of the Polish magnates privileges' and authority being taken away. With the Polish influence in the Ruthenian lands significantly reduced and in some cases eliminated,

SECTION 20

#1732765593869

3476-560: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Its new primates were styled " Metropolitans of Kiev, Galicia and all Ruthenia ". He appointed Gregory II Bulgarian as the new Greek Catholic primate, who rejoined the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople under Dionysius I of Constantinople in 1470. This situation continued for some time, and in the intervening years what is now western and central Ukraine came under

3634-562: The Roman Curia and on certain posts within the papal court , a practice to which it returned in 1940. For some years, beginning in 1898, the Maison de la Bonne Presse publishing house of Paris produced a similar yearbook in French called Annuaire Pontifical Catholique , not compiled by the Holy See. This contained much additional information, such as detailed historical articles on

3792-725: The Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks seized power in the Russian Empire and transformed it into the Soviet Union. Religion in the new socialist society was assigned little value by the state, but in particular Russian Orthodox Church was distrusted because of its active support of the White Movement . Massive arrests and repressions began immediately. In the Ukrainian SSR (one of the founding republics of

3950-510: The Ruthenian Uniate Church , where Ruthenia is the anglicization of Rus' , the medieval kingdom that ruled what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia, and uniate means 'part of a union', in this case the Union of Brest (1595). However, the term Uniate became a term of abuse in writings by Orthodox authors, and fell of out favour among Greek Catholics themselves. The people in this church were referred to by

4108-793: The Swiss Guards and the Papal Palace at the Vatican . The Annuario Pontificio provides the Catholic Church's list of popes . As historical questions are reinterpreted by each successive pope, they are recognized in the Annuario Pontificio . For example, the 1942 Annuario Pontificio recognized the decisions of the Council of Pisa (1409), listing three popes for the period: Gregory XII (1406–1409), Alexander V (1409–1410), and John XXIII (1410–1415). The Western Schism

4266-552: The UNA-UNSO , took an uncompromising stance towards the return of its lost property and parishes. According to a Greek-Catholic priest, "even if the whole village is now Orthodox and one person is Greek Catholic, the church [building] belongs to that Catholic because the church was built by his grandparents and great-grandparents." History of Christianity in Ukraine The history of Christianity in Ukraine dates back to

4424-639: The Ukrainian Orthodox Church . Additionally, there is a smaller number of Byzantine rite adherents in the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church who were dominated by the Kingdom of Hungary in the past. Western Christian bodies including the Latin Church of the Catholic Church and several Protestant denominations have had a limited presence on the territory of Ukraine since at least the 16th century and represent

4582-614: The Union of Brest , the Ruthenian church was transferred from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to the jurisdiction of the Holy See in 1596, thereby forming the Ruthenian Uniate Church . The Union of Brest was a treaty between the Ruthenian Orthodox Church in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , under the leadership of the metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia and all Rus'— Michael III —on one part, and

4740-625: The " Equal-to-apostles " brothers Cyril and Methodius , who passed through present-day Ukraine on their way to preach to the Khazars . Sent from Constantinople at the request of the ruler of Great Moravia , these brothers would add to foundation of Christianity in Ukraine by creating the Glagolitic alphabet , a precursor to the eponymous " Cyrillic script ", which enabled the local population to worship God in Old Church Slavonic ,

4898-618: The "brotherhoods" ( bratstvo ) . In 1589 Hedeon Balaban , the bishop of Lviv , asked the Pope to take him under his protection, because he was exasperated by the struggle with urban communities and the Ecumenical Patriarch. He was followed by the bishops of Lutsk , Cholm , and Turov in 1590. In the following years, the bishops of Volodymyr-Volynskyy and Przemyśl and the Metropolitan of Kiev announced their secession from

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church - Misplaced Pages Continue

5056-403: The 1960s when their organizers were arrested. In 1974, a clandestine convent was uncovered in Lviv. During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church did flourish throughout the Ukrainian diaspora. Cardinal Yosyf Slipyi was jailed as a dissident but named in pectore (in secret) a cardinal in 1949; he was freed in 1963 and was the subject of an extensive campaign to have him named as

5214-404: The 19th century there was a struggle within the Uniate Church (and therefore within the general Galician society due to its domination by priests) between Russophiles who desired union with Russia and Ukrainophiles who saw the Galician Ruthenians as Ukrainians, not Russians. The former group were mostly represented by older and more conservative elements of the priesthood, while the latter ideology

5372-469: The 20th century. In 1945, Soviet authorities arrested, deported, and sentenced to forced-labor camps in Siberia and elsewhere the church's metropolitan Yosyf Slipyi and nine other Greek Catholic bishops, as well as hundreds of clergy and leading lay activists. In Lviv alone, 800 priests were imprisoned. All the above-mentioned bishops and significant numbers of clergymen died in prisons, concentration camps, internal exile, or soon after their release during

5530-438: The Catholic and Uniate clergy and Jews. During this time metropolitan Mogila took full advantage of the moment to restore the Orthodox domination in Ukraine, including returning one of its sacred buildings, the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kiev . In 1686, 40 years after Mogila's death, the Ottomans , acting on the behalf of the regent of Russia Sophia Alekseyevna , pressured the Patriarch of Constantinople into transferring

5688-434: The Catholic hierarchy primarily as Graeci catholici ( Greek Catholics ) because they used the "Greek" or Byzantine Rite , as well as more specifically Rutheni catholici ( Ruthenian Catholics). The leader of the Church was called Metropolita Kioviensis or "Metropolitan of Kiev" and sometimes also "of Galicia and all Rus'" until 1805. The Austrian Empire later used Griechisch-katolisch (German for 'Greek Catholic') as

5846-403: The Catholicism as one of the main tools to unify the nation where non-Polish minority comprised over one third of the citizenry. Nevertheless, the Poles saw the Greek Catholic Galicia Ukrainians as even less reliable and loyal as the Orthodox Volhynia Ukrainians. Also, despite the communion with Rome, the UGCC attained a strong Ukrainian national character of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and

6004-402: The Christian faith into Ukrainian Rus. By 906, they had founded a diocese in Peremyshl , today a diocese of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Przemyśl , Poland . Their efforts, and those of their apostles, led to the translation of Christian Scriptures and service (liturgies) from Greek to Slavonic, and the eventual development of the modern Cyrillic alphabet . By the 9th century , it

6162-414: The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was increasingly influenced by the Ottomans . In 1595 some representatives of this group arrived to Rome and asked Pope Clement VIII to take them under his jurisdiction and unite them to the Apostolic See of Saint Peter . In the Union of Brest of 1596 (colloquially known as unia ), a part of the Ukrainian Church was accepted under the jurisdiction of

6320-533: The Emperor. As a result of the reforms, over the next century the Greek-Catholic Church in Austrian Galicia ceased being a puppet of foreign interests and became the primary cultural force within the Ukrainian community. Most independent native Ukrainian cultural and political trends (such as Rusynophilia, Russophilia and later Ukrainophilia ) emerged from within the ranks of the Greek-Catholic Church clergy . The participation of Greek Catholic priests or their children in western Ukrainian cultural and political life

6478-436: The Eparchy of Volodymyr, for example, two different lay noblemen were both appointed as bishop by the Polish king. Both "bishops" hired mercenaries and fought a pitched battle over control of the Eparchy, before the Polish king finally stepped in and appointed one of the two candidates to an adjacent Orthodox See. Meanwhile, the religious renewal caused by the Counter-Reformation among Latin Catholics in Poland and Lithuania drew

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church - Misplaced Pages Continue

6636-417: The French Annuaire pontifical catholique in providing global statistics on the Roman Catholic Church and arranges such data by diocese; the Statistical Yearbook of the Church arranges the same data by country and continent. According to the Annuario Pontificio 2012 the statistical data given in the yearbook regarding archdioceses and dioceses are furnished by the diocesan curias concerned and reflect

6794-421: The Greek-Catholic Church and removed Polish influence. They also mandated that Uniate seminarians receive a formal higher education (previously, priests had been educated informally by their fathers), and organized institutions in Vienna and Lviv that would serve this function. This led to the appearance, for the first time, of a large, educated class within the Ukrainian population in Galicia. It also engendered

6952-440: The Greek-Catholic Church in Russia was completed in 1875 with the abolition of the Eparchy of Kholm . By the end of the century, those remaining faithful to this church began emigrating to the U.S., Canada, and Brazil due to persecution by the Orthodox Church and the Russian Empire, e.g. the Pratulin Martyrs . Despite being once the majority religion in Ukraine, the Uniate church was now mostly confined to Eastern Galicia . Within

7110-424: The Latin Church under the leadership of Pope Clement VIII on the other part. Following the partitions of Poland , the eparchies of the Ruthenian Uniate Church ( Latin : Ecclesia Ruthena unita ) were liquidated in the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia . Only the three eparchies that came under Austrian jurisdiction remained of the Brest Union. In 1963, the church was recognized as Ukrainian through

7268-427: The Latin Church), 170,000 out of 450,000 did so by 1908. Although the Partitions of Poland awarded most of the Ruthenian lands to the Russian Empire, this excluded the southwestern Kingdom Of Galicia (constituting the modern Lviv , Ivano-Frankivsk and parts of Ternopil oblasts), which fell under the control of the Habsburg monarchy and subsequently the Austrian Empire and the Austria-Hungary . Similarly to

7426-401: The Lviv Komsomol , Oleksiy Babiychuk, claimed: in this oblast, particularly in the rural areas, a large number of the population adheres to religious practices, among them a large proportion of youth. In the last few years, the activity of the Uniates [Ukrainian Catholics] has grown, that of representatives of the Uniates as well as former Uniate priests; there are even reverberations to renew

7584-538: The Moscow Patriarchate was immediately restored. Within months nearly a million Orthodox pilgrims, from all over the country, fearing that these reclaimed western parishes would share the fate of others in the USSR , took the chance to visit them. However, the Soviet authorities, although confiscating some of the public property, did not show the repressions of the post-revolutionary period that many expected and no executions or physical destruction took place. On October 8, 1942, Archbishop Nikanor and Bishop Mstyslav (later

7742-399: The Old Rus in Kiev , Christianity became the dominant religion since its official acceptance in 989 by Vladimir the Great (Volodymyr the Great), who brought it from Byzantine Crimea and installed it as the state religion of medieval Kievan Rus ( Ruthenia ), with the metropolitan see in Kiev. Although separated into various Christian denominations , most Ukrainian Christians share

7900-582: The Orthodox Church came to an end with Khrushchev's "Thaw" programme, which included closing the recently opened Kiev's Caves Lavra. However, in the west-Ukrainian dioceses, which were the largest in the USSR, the Soviet attitude was "softest". In fact in the western city of Lviv, only one church was closed. The Moscow Patriarchate also relaxed its canons on the clergy, especially those from the former-uniate territories, allowing them, for example to shave beards (a very uncommon Orthodox practice) and conduct eulogy in Ukrainian instead of Church Slavonic . In 1988 with

8058-425: The Orthodox Church of Kiev and all Rus' from the jurisdiction of Constantinople to the Patriarch of Moscow , established a century prior to that. The legality of this step is occasionally questioned to this day along with the fact that the transfer was accompanied by graft and bribery, which in church affairs amounts to an ecclesiastical crime. The transfer itself, however, led to the significant Ukrainian domination of

SECTION 50

#1732765593869

8216-405: The Orthodox clergy actually welcomed the Soviet troops. The addition of the ethnic Ukrainian territory of Volhynia to the USSR created several issues. Having avoided the Bolshevik repression, the Orthodox church of this rural region outnumbered the rest of the Ukrainian SSR by nearly a thousand churches and clergy as well as many cloisters including the Pochayiv Lavra . The ecclesiastical link with

8374-472: The Orthodox mob in Vitebsk in 1623. As the unia continued its expansion into Ukraine, its unpopularity grew, particularly in the southern steppes where Dnieper Cossacks lived. The Cossacks, who valued their traditions and culture, saw the unia as a final step of Polonization. As a result, they reacted by becoming fierce proponents of Orthodoxy. Such feelings played a role in the mass uprising whose targets included all non-Orthodox religious proponents,

8532-408: The Polish authorities sought to weaken it in various ways. In 1924, following a visit with the Ukrainian Catholic believers in North America and western Europe, the head of the UGCC was initially denied reentry to Lviv until after a considerable delay. Polish priests led by their bishops began to undertake missionary work among Eastern Catholic faithful, and the administrative restrictions were placed on

8690-442: The Polish authorities sought to weaken the UGCC. In 1924, following a visit with Ukrainian Catholic believers in North America and western Europe, the head of the UGCC was initially denied reentry to Lwów (the Polish name at the time for Lviv), only being allowed back after a considerable delay. Polish Catholic priests, led by their Latin bishops, began missionary work among Greek Catholics; and administrative restrictions were placed on

8848-412: The Roman Pope, becoming a Byzantine Rite Catholic Church , a Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, colloquially known as the Uniate Church. While the new church gained many faithful among the Ukrainians in Galicia , the majority of Ukrainians in the rest of the lands remained within Eastern Orthodoxy with the church affairs ruled by then from Kiev under the metropolitan Petro Mohyla . The Orthodox Church

9006-440: The Russian Empire, the Uniate Church continued to function until 1875, when the Eparchy of Chelm was abolished .The greater longevity of the Uniate Church in this region was attributed to the fact that it came under Russian control later than did the other territories (1809) and that, unlike other Ukrainian regions within the Russian Empire, it had been part of the Congress Poland , which had some autonomy until 1865. Within Chelm,

9164-407: The Russian Orthodox Church always viewed with the great suspicion by the regime for its being the cornerstone of pre-revolutionary Russian Empire and the initially strong opposition the church took towards the regime change (the position of the patriarch Tikhon of Moscow was especially critical). On November 11, 1921 [5] , an unrecognised Church Council started in Kiev. The council would proclaim

9322-418: The Russian Orthodox Church, which continued well into the 18th century, Feofan Prokopovich , Epifany Slavinetsky , Stephen Yavorsky and Demetrius of Rostov being among the most notable representatives of this trend. In the late 18th century, the Crimean Khanate (Vassal for Ottoman Empire) was conquered by Russia, and the latter annexed most of the southern steppes and Crimea. Colonization of these lands

9480-412: The Russian Orthodox Church. During the period in which the Soviet government tolerated the renewed Ukrainian national church the UAOC gained a wide following particularly among the Ukrainian peasantry. In the early-1930s the Soviet government abruptly reversed the policies in the national republics and mass arrests of UAOC's hierarchy and clergy culminated in the liquidation of the church in 1930. Most of

9638-405: The Russophiles. The Balkans themselves were largely Orthodox and crucial to the Russian Panslavism movement. In this situation, the Galician Ruthenians found themselves in the pawn's position. When the power struggle erupted into the First World War, the Russian Army initially quickly overran Galicia (see Eastern Front (World War I) ). Free of Polish domination, unlike in other areas of Ukraine

SECTION 60

#1732765593869

9796-420: The Ruthenian people under their rule from their brethren across the mountains. Thus despite being Uniate at the time of the formation of Czechoslovakia, the population was about evenly divided between Rusynophile, Ukrainophile and Russophile orientation. The general Russophilic sentiment was very strong amongst them, and these cultural and political orientations impacted the local religious communities. Even before

9954-431: The Ruthenian population left outside Ukraine in 1945 (today Prešov territory in Slovakia) see Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church ). On September 17, 1939, with Poland crumbling under the German attack that started the Second World War, the Red Army attacked Poland , assigning territories with an ethnic Ukrainian majority to Soviet Ukraine . Because the Ukrainians were by-and-large discontented with Polish rule most of

10112-406: The Soviet Union in 1989 with reestablishment of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church which also triggered recovery of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church movement out of diaspora and transition of the former Russian Orthodox Church clergy who were native Ukrainians. Today, there are three national Ukrainian churches: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine , the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and

10270-401: The UAOC and UGCC sought to avoid the transfer under the Moscow Patriarchate; something that Moscow tolerated until after World War II, for example the head of the Ukrainian Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev attended the funeral of the head of the Uniate Church in 1946. Nevertheless, as the Uniate Church did in some cases support the Nazi regime, the overall Soviet attitude was negative. In 1948

10428-409: The USSR) as early as in December 1918 the first execution of the head of the Ukrainian Exarchate Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych took place. This was only the start which culminated in mass closing and destruction of churches (some standing since the days of the Kievan Rus) and executions of clergy and followers. Ukraine was controlled by several short-lived yet independent governments which revived

10586-487: The USSR, and thus with no possible contact with the persecuted mother church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople agreed to take over Moscow Patriarchate 's role and in 1923 the Polish Orthodox Church was formed out of the parishes that were on the territory of the Polish republic although 90% of its clergy and believers were non-Polish people. The redrawal of national boundaries following World War I also affected yet another ethnically Ruthenian territory. In 1920,

10744-588: The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. With respect to the Orthodox Ukrainian population in eastern Poland, the Polish government initially issued a decree defending the rights of the Orthodox minorities. In practice, this often failed, as the Catholics , also eager to strengthen their position, had stronger representation in the Sejm and the courts. During the Polish rule, 190 Orthodox churches were destroyed (although some of them have already been abandoned) and 150 were forcibly transformed into Catholic (not Ukrainian Catholic) churches. Such actions were condemned by

10902-470: The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. After World War II Ukrainian Catholics came under the rule of Communist Poland and the hegemony of the Soviet Union . With only a few clergy invited to attend, a synod was convened in Lviv, which revoked the Union of Brest. Officially all of the church property was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate , Most of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy went underground. This catacomb church

11060-429: The Ukrainian community. Most independent native Ukrainian cultural trends (such as Rusynophilia, Russophilia and later Ukrainophilia ) emerged from within the ranks of the Uniate Church. The participation of Uniate priests or their children in western Ukrainian cultural and political life was so great that western Ukrainians were accused of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine by their Polish rivals. During

11218-435: The Ukrainian identity started to sharply develop in the 16th and 17th century. Greek Catholicism became the dominating religion in Ukraine, and "the Ukrainians became almost strangers to the Russians". At the same time, the Uniates were not treated on par with Latin Catholics in Poland-Lithuania; Greek Catholics were excluded from the Polish Senate , and bishops were to be supervised by Latin Catholic bishops. The Uniate church

11376-681: The Ukrainian national idea. Ukraine declared its political independence following the fall of the Provisional Government in 1918 and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was established. Following the Soviet regime's taking root in Ukraine and despite the ongoing Soviet-wide antireligious campaign, the Bolshevik authorities saw the national churches as a tool in their goal to suppress

11534-518: The Uniate Church began to disintegrate. In Volhynia the famous Pochayiv Lavra was returned to Russian Orthodox clergy in 1833. The final blow came from the Synod of Polotsk in 1839 headed by the ex-Uniate Bishop Semashko, where it was agreed to terminate the accords of Union of Brest and all of the remaining Uniate property on the territory of the Belarus and Right Bank Ukraine within the Russian Empire

11692-648: The Uniate church had become closely linked to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian national movement. For this reason, the population in general were quite loyal to the Austrian Habsburgs , earning the nickname "Tyroleans of the East", and resisted reunion into the Orthodox Church. A minority of them, however, welcomed the Russians and reverted to Orthodoxy. After regaining the lost territories with

11850-457: The Union of Brest, the new Greek Catholic church was widely supported by both the Ukrainian clergy and local Christians. According to Ludvik Nemec, the creation of the Uniate church was a turning point for the development of Ukrainian national awareness – the separation from Russian-dominated Orthodoxy made the Ukrainian population more aware of the linguistic and cultural differences from Russia, and

12008-402: The Union." Theodosius Rostocki wrote that in response to resistance encountered by Greek Catholics in Ukraine, Russian authorities took over the Uniate churches: "Wherever priests and people, in spite of threats and terrors, remained steadfast, then, even when they [the persecutors] had obtained only a few signatures from the community, they confiscated the church with all its furnishings, took

12166-629: The Vatican combined with hostility to the Poles, who in Ukraine constituted the vast majority of these Christians". Latin Catholic and Uniate churches were closed, and Catholic clergy was a common target of Nazi executions. Nazi anti-Catholic policies were extended to Germans as well – the Catholic church in Mykolaiv was also forcefully closed, despite most of the parishioners being ethnic Germans. In

12324-550: The Vatican tried to raise the status of the Catholic Church to a state within a state. In the last few years, the Vatican has paid particular attention to the question of Catholicism of the Slavonic nations. This is poignantly underscored by the Pope when he states that he is not only a Pope of Polish origin, but the first Slavic Pope, and he will pay particular attention to the Christianization of all Slavic nations. By

12482-739: The World) published in Kyiv wrote: Proof that the Church is persistently striving to strengthen its political influence in socialist countries is witnessed by the fact that Pope John Paul II gives his support to the emigre hierarchy of the so-called Ukrainian Catholic Church . . .. The current tactic of Pope John Paul II and the Roman Curia lies in the attempts to strengthen the position of the Church in all socialist countries as they have done in Poland, where

12640-592: The clergy members under the threat of prosecution by the Soviet state. Much of the UGCC and UAOC clergy not willing to serve in the ROC emigrated to Germany, the United States, or Canada. Others were sent to Siberia and even chose to be martyred. Officially the Moscow Patriarchate never recognised the canonical right of the synod as it lacked any bishops there. The relatively permissive post-war government attitude towards

12798-546: The clergy themselves or by their children. This influence was so great that western Ukrainians were accused by their Polish rivals of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine. The territory received by Austria in the partition of Poland included Galicia (modern western Ukraine and southern Poland). Here the Greek-Catholic Ruthenian (Ukrainian) peasantry had been largely under Polish Catholic domination. The Austrians granted equal freedom of worship to

12956-531: The command of Askold and Dir , the two princes were baptized in that holy city. Returning to Kiev, the two actively championed Christianity for a period of 20 years, until they were murdered by the pagan Prince Oleg in the inter-princely rivalry for the Kiev throne. Patriarch Photios purportedly provided a bishop and priests from Constantinople to help in the Christianization of the Slavs. By 900,

13114-460: The conversion to Orthodoxy met with strong resistance from the local ethnic Ukrainian priests and parishioners, and was accomplished largely through the efforts of Russian police, Cossacks, and immigrating Russophile priests from eastern Galicia . The resistance was strong enough that when, a generation later in 1905, the formally Eastern Orthodox population of Chelm was allowed to return to Catholicism (Russian authorities only allowing conversion to

13272-641: The counterattack in late 1914, the Austrian authorities responded with repressions: several thousand Orthodox and Russophilic people died while being interred at a Talerhof concentration camp for those deemed disloyal to Austria. Already a minority, the Russophiles were largely extinguished as a religious-cultural force in Galicia as a result of these actions. After the Russian Revolution and

13430-697: The country (see Religion in the Soviet Union ). In the city of Lviv, only one church was closed (at a time when many cities in the rest of Ukraine did not have a working church). Moreover, the western dioceses of Lviv-Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk were the largest in the USSR and contained the majority of the Russian Orthodox Church's cloisters (particularly convents, of which there were seven in Ukrainian SSR but none in Russia). Orthodox canon law

13588-607: The country of Czechoslovakia was formed, the nation included several minorities. In the easternmost end of the country, Transcarpathia lived the Rusyn population. For most of their history they were ruled by the Hungarians, who unlike the Austrians ruling Galicia were quite active in opposing Ukrainophile sentiments. Instead, the Hungarians supported a Rusyn identity (separate from either a pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian orientation) through pro-Hungarian priests in an effort to separate

13746-501: The creation of the West Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918, the church was also increasingly referred to as Ukrainian in pastoral letters. During the interwar period, the word Ukrainian was well established in the diasporan parishes. Most documents from the Vatican did not officially change the church's name until 1963. The first use of various names of the church are listed here. The Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church

13904-663: The earliest centuries of the history of Christianity , to the Apostolic Age , with mission trips along the Black Sea and a legend of Andrew the Apostle even ascending the hills of Kiev . The first Christian community on territory of modern Ukraine is documented as early as the 4th century with the establishment of the Metropolitanate of Gothia , which was centered in the Crimean peninsula . However, on territory of

14062-554: The efforts of Yosyf Slipyi . In 1963, the ordinary (or hierarch ) of the church was granted the title of "Major Archbishop". He currently holds the title of "Major archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia". However, the hierarchs and faithful of the church acclaim their ordinary as " Patriarch " and have requested Papal recognition of this honour. In its early years, the church was called the Ecclesia (Ruthena) unita in Latin, often anglicized as

14220-401: The entire Church but is not distinguished with the patriarchal title. The incumbent Major Archbishop is Sviatoslav Shevchuk . The church regards itself as a successor to the metropolis that was established in 988 following the Christianization of Kievan Rus' by Grand Prince Vladimir the Great . Following the establishment of the metropolis of Kiev, Galicia and all Rus' , by the terms of

14378-537: The envy of Orthodox clergy. With the encouragement of the Society of Jesus , four bishops of the Ruthenian Church signed the Union of Brest in 1595, broke from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople , and reunited with the Catholic Church under the authority of the Holy See , while continuing to say the Byzantine Rite in Old Church Slavonic . The Union of Brest was also motivated by outrage over

14536-645: The first formation of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). The Russian Orthodox Church strongly opposed the formation of the Ukrainian autocephaly and not a single ordained bishop was willing or able to ordain the hierarchy for a new church. Therefore, the clergy "ordained" its own hierarchy itself, a practice questionable under the canon law , in the "Alexandrian" manner - by laying on priests' hands on two senior candidates who became known as Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky) and Archbishop Nestor (Sharayivsky) (reportedly

14694-532: The first world war already quite a lot of distant mountain communities were de facto Orthodox, where priests simply ceased to follow the Uniate canons. However, much more significant changes took place in the interwar period. In the 1920s many Russian emigres, particularly Orthodox clergy, settled in Serbia . Loyal to the Orthodox state, they became actively involved in missionary work in central Europe. A group, headed by Bishop Dosifei went to Transcarpathia. Because of

14852-586: The governance of the nations of Poland , Hungary , Romania and Czechoslovakia . Under the previous century of Austrian rule, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church attained such a strong Ukrainian national character that in interwar Poland, the Greek Catholics of Galicia were seen by the nationalist Polish and Catholic state as even less patriotic than the Orthodox Volhynians. Extending its Polonization policies to its Eastern Territories ,

15010-478: The group behind this publication, Yosef Terelya, was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to seven years imprisonment and five years of exile. His successor, Vasely Kobryn, was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile. The Solidarity movement in Poland and Pope John Paul II supported the Ukrainian Catholics. The state media attacked John Paul II. The antireligious journal Liudyna i Svit (Man and

15168-493: The head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky , who claimed that these acts would "destroy in the souls of our non-united Orthodox brothers the very thought of any possibility of reunion." In addition to persecution from the new authorities, the Orthodox clergy found itself with no ecclesiastical link to submit to. Like most ex- Russian Orthodox communities that ended up outside

15326-870: The heads of three other Eastern Catholic Churches . In 1968, when the Greek Catholic Church was legalized in Czechoslovakia , a large-scale campaign was launched to harass recalcitrant clergy who remained illegal. These clergy were subject to interrogations, fines and beatings. In January 1969 the KGB arrested an underground Catholic bishop named Vasyl Velychkovsky and two Catholic priests, and sentenced them to three years of imprisonment for breaking anti-religious legislation. Activities that could lead to arrest included holding religious services, educating children as Catholics, performing baptisms, conducting weddings or funerals, hearing confessions or giving

15484-538: The historical links between the local Greek Catholic clergy to the disliked Hungarian authorities, mass conversions to the Orthodox Church occurred. By the start of the Second World War, approximately one third of all of the Rusyn population reverted to Orthodoxy [6] . The region's local Hungarian population, estimated at slightly less than 20% of the population, remained overwhelmingly Calvinist or Catholic. (For

15642-476: The idea was shared by growing number of the lower priests, the ruling Uniate synod , controlled by the strong Polish influence, rejected all Semashko's suggestions. In addition many of the Latin Church Catholic authorities responded to this by actively imposing Latin practice and hierarchy. In 1831, the general discontent of the Poles with the Russian rule erupted into a revolt, now known as

15800-566: The indication "official publication" from 1899 to 1904, but this ceased when, giving the word "official" a more restricted sense, the Acta Sanctae Sedis , forerunner of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis , was declared the only "official" publication of the Holy See. In 1912, it resumed the title Annuario Pontificio . From 1912 to 1924, it included not only lists of names, but also brief illustrative notes on departments of

15958-645: The insult to the Primacy of the See of Kiev implicit in the recent promotion of the See of Moscow to a patriarchate by Jeremias II of Constantinople . In 1596, the Ruthenian bishops finalized their agreement with the Holy See. The union was not accepted by all the members of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church in these lands, and marked the creation of Greek Catholic Church and separate eparchies that continued to stay Orthodox among which were Lviv eparchy, Peremyshel eparchy, Mukachevo eparchy and Lutsk eparchy that at first accepted

16116-472: The lands of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest Eastern Catholic Church , priests' children often became priests and married within their social group, establishing a tightly knit hereditary caste . Numbering approximately 2,000-2,500 by the 19th century, priestly families tended to marry within their group, constituting a tight-knit hereditary caste . In the absence of a significant culturally and politically active native nobility (although there

16274-503: The last rites, copying religious materials, possessing prayer books, possessing icons, possessing church calendars, possessing religious books or other sacred objects. Conferences were held to discuss how to perfect the methodology in combatting Ukrainian Catholicism in West Ukraine. At times the Ukrainian Catholics attempted to employ legal channels to have their community recognized by the state. In 1956–1957, there were petitions to

16432-517: The late 1980s there was a shift in the Soviet government's attitude towards religion. At the height of Mikhail Gorbachev 's liberalization reforms the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was allowed again to function officially in December 1989. But then it found itself largely in disarray with the nearly all of its pre-1946 parishes and property lost to the Orthodox faith. The church, actively supported by nationalist organizations such as Rukh and later

16590-549: The latter group, led by Bishop Iosif Semashko (1798–1868) and firmly rejected by the ruling Greek-Catholic synod remained largely controlled by the pro-Polish clergy with the Russian authorities largely refusing to interfere. Following the Congress of Vienna , the Russian Empire occupied so-called West Galicia (formerly in Austrian Poland) and, temporarily, Tarnopol district, where a separate metropolitan of Galicia

16748-562: The local bishops and royalty of the Grand Principality of Moscow , he was exiled from Moscow, while a council of Russian bishops appointed their own metropolitan, Jonah of Moscow , without the consent of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople , leading to the independence of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1448. For this reason, Patriarch Gregory III of Constantinople reorganized the Ruthenian Church in

16906-411: The local branches in the ever-crumbling Soviet authority sympathised with the national sentiments in their areas. Violence grew especially after the UGCC's demand that all property that was held prior to 1939 would be returned. It is now believed that the only real event which helped to contain the growing schism in the former-uniate territories was the ROC's reaction of raising its Ukrainian Exarchate to

17064-530: The metropolitan of Halych. Just before his death, Peter moved his episcopal see from Vladimir to Moscow. During his reign, the Metropolitanate of Lithuania was established in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , while the metropolis of Halych was also re-established after his death. In 1445, the metropolitan Isidore , with his see in Moscow, joined the Council of Florence and became the papal legate for all Ruthenia and Lithuania. After Isidore suffered prosecution by

17222-501: The millennium anniversary of the baptism of Rus, there was yet another shift in the Soviet attitude towards religion, coinciding with the Perestroika and Glasnost programmes. The Soviet Government publicly apologized for oppression of religion and promised to return all property to the rightful owners. As a result, thousands of closed religious buildings in all areas of the USSR were returned to their original owners. In Ukraine this

17380-554: The nationalists of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army which saw this as treason. The Russian Orthodox Church regained its general monopoly in the Ukrainian SSR after World War II following another shift in the official Soviet attitude towards Christian churches. As a result, many started to accuse it of being a puppet of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . After the suspicious death of Patriarch Tikhon,

17538-513: The newly acquired lands. Nevertheless, the first Russophile tendencies began to surface, and came in face of the Uniate Bishop Joseph Semashko . Believing that the Uniate Church's role as an interim bridge between Orthodoxy and their eventual path to Catholicism is over, now that the ruler of the lands is no longer a Catholic, but an Orthodox Monarch, he began to push for an eventual reversion of all Uniates. Although

17696-511: The official adoption of Byzantine rites by Prince Vladimir I of Kiev in 988 when the metropolis of Kiev within the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople was established. Later at the time of the Great Schism ( c.  1054 ), the church took sides and remained Orthodox . Following the devastating Mongol invasions and the sack of Kiev in 1240, Metropolitan Maximos moved to the town of Vladimir-on-Klyazma in 1299. In 1303, at

17854-549: The original diocesan structure of the Ruthenian Uniate Church was split among the three states in the following way: The Habsburg monarchy established the crown land of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and also a territory called West Galicia , which in 1803 was merged with Galicia and Lodomeria. In 1804, the combined entities became a crownland of the Austrian Empire . The Greek Catholic Church

18012-466: The overt activity of this Church. After Stalin died, Ukrainian Catholics hoped this would lead to better conditions for themselves, but such hopes were dashed in the late 1950s when the authorities arrested even more priests and unleashed a new wave of anti-Catholic propaganda. Secret ordinations occurred in exile. Secret theological seminaries in Ternopil and Kolomyia were reported in the Soviet press in

18170-442: The persecution of Ukrainian Greek Catholics intensified, and the church was forbidden from accepting converts from Orthodoxy. Russian authorities harassed and arrested Uniate priests, while Russian Orthodox priests accompanied by Russian soldiers visited Ukrainian villages and intimidated the population into converting to Orthodoxy. Wolff notes that despite harsh persecution and heavy pressure, "the great majority of Uniates held fast to

18328-437: The post-Stalin thaw. The exception was metropolitan Yosyf Slipyi who, after 18 years of imprisonment and persecution, was released in 1963 thanks to the intervention of Pope John XXIII . Slipyi took refuge in Rome, where he received the title of Major Archbishop of Lviv, and became a cardinal in 1965. The clergy who joined the Russian Orthodox Church were spared the large-scale persecution of religion that occurred elsewhere in

18486-564: The pressure from its powerful neighbors resulted in its partitions by neighbouring empires. The Russian Empire , in particular, gained most of ethnically Ukrainian land and all of the Belarusian lands. After nearly two centuries of polonization, the Uniate influence on the Ukrainian population was so great that hardly any remained Orthodox. Although some, particularly in Podolia , chose to revert to Orthodoxy soon after, this in many cases

18644-445: The proper authorities to request for churches to be opened. More petitions were sent in the 60s and 70s, all of which were refused. In 1976, a priest named Volodymyr Prokipov was arrested for presenting such a petition to Moscow. The response to these petitions by the state had been to sharpen attacks against the community. In 1984 a samizdat Chronicle of the Catholic Church began to be published by Ukrainian Catholics. The founder of

18802-493: The reborn Polish state . This included Polesie and Volhynia , areas with almost exclusively Orthodox population amongst the rural peasants, as well as the former Austrian province of Galicia with its Uniate population. The Greek Catholic church, which functions in communion with the Latin Catholicism, could have hoped to receive a better treatment in Poland, whose leadership, especially the endecja party, saw

18960-671: The relics of Clement of Rome who died in Ukraine in the 1st century were also used). Despite the canon law controversy, the new church was recognized in 1924 by the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VII . In the wake of the Ukrainization policies carried out in Soviet Ukraine in the first decade of the Soviet rule many of the Orthodox clergy willfully joined the church thus avoiding the persecution suffered by many clergy members who remained inside

19118-428: The request of the Ruthenian kings of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia , Patriarch Athanasius I of Constantinople created the separate metropolis of Halych which included the western parishes of the original metropolis of Kiev. The new metropolis did not last for long (inconsistently throughout most of the 14th century), and its new metropolitan, Peter of Moscow , was consecrated as the metropolitan of Kiev, rather than

19276-609: The rule of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . The Polish king Sigismund III Vasa was heavily influenced by the ideals of the Counter-Reformation and wanted to increase the Catholic presence in Ukraine. While the clergy of the Ruthenian lands were technically ruled from Constantinople, the Ruthenian Orthodox bishops were appointed by the Polish Catholic monarch, often with disastrous results. In

19434-603: The ruler of Kiev, became baptized, taking the " Christian name " Helen . Her baptism in 955 (or 957) in either Kiev or Constantinople (accounts differ) was a turning point in religious life of Rus' but it was left to her grandson, Vladimir the Great , to make Kievan Rus a Christian state. Both Vladimir and Olga are venerated as the Equal-to-apostles saints by the Eastern Orthodox Church . Princess Olga of Kiev shortly after her baptism appealed to

19592-418: The sacraments in private. The identities of former priests could have been known to the Soviet police who regularly watched, interrogated and fined them, but stopped short of arrest unless their activities went beyond a small circle of people. New secretly ordained priests were often treated more harshly. The church even grew during this time, and this was acknowledged by Soviet sources. The first secretary of

19750-558: The situation in the lands of the Russian Empire, the Uniate Ruthenian (Ukrainian) peasantry was largely under the Polish Latin Catholic domination. The Austrians granted equal legal privileges to the Uniate Church and removed Polish influence. They also mandated that Uniate seminarians receive a formal higher education (previously, priests had been educated informally by other priests, usually their fathers, as

19908-508: The status of an autonomous church , which took place in 1990, and up until the break up of the USSR in late 1991 there was an uneasy peace in western Ukraine. After the nation became independent, the question of an independent and an autocephalous Orthodox Church arose once again. Annuario Pontificio The red-covered yearbook, compiled by the Central Office of Church Statistics and published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana ,

20066-502: The surviving property was officially transferred to the ROC, with some churches closed for good and destroyed. On the eve of the Second World War only 3% of the pre-revolutionary parishes on the territory of Ukraine remained open to the public, often hidden in deep rural areas. The 1921 Peace of Riga treaty that ended the Polish-Soviet War gave the significant areas of the ethnically Ukrainian (and Belarusian) territories to

20224-576: The synod were removed; and the Church began to disintegrate, with its parishes in Volhynia reverting to Orthodoxy, including the 1833 transfer of the famous Pochaiv Lavra . In 1839 the Synod of Polotsk (in modern-day Belarus), under the leadership of Bishop Semashko , dissolved the Greek-Catholic church in the Russian Empire , and all its property was transferred to the Orthodox state church. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia says that, in what

20382-683: The territory of present Ukraine were eliminated by the Gothic invasion in the third century. The head of the "Scythian bishopric" presented at the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325 probably in fact was Bishop Cadmus from the Bosporan Kingdom . Pope Clement I (ruled 88–98) was exiled to Chersonesos on the Crimean peninsula in 102, as was Pope Martin I in 655. Furthermore, it has been definitively recorded that

20540-598: The territory with the mass Baptism of Kiev in the Dnieper River in 988 ordered by Vladimir. That year is considered as the year of establishment of the Kiev Metropolis and part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople . The exact date of establishment is not clearly known as the Kiev eparchy (metropolis) is mentioned as early as 891. The first cathedral temple, Church of the Tithes (Assumption of Virgin Mary),

20698-443: The union but later oscillated back and forth, depending on who was the Bishop. There was an attempt to resolve the conflict between Orthodox and Greek Catholics by adopting "Articles for Pacification of Ruthenian people" in 1632. Following that, both churches existed legally in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with Metropolitans of Kyiv, one, Josyf Veliamyn Rutsky , Greek Catholic, and another, Peter Mogila , Orthodox. Following

20856-501: The very location of the apostle's cross, planted on a hill overlooking the city of Kiev. Although the Primary Chronicle refers to the apostle continuing his journey as far north as Novgorod , Andrew's visit to any of these lands has not been proven, and in fact may have been a later invention designed to boost the autocephalic aspirations in the territories where the upper clergy continued to be dominated by Greeks for several centuries. These first half-legendary Christian churches on

21014-418: The vocation was passed on within families), and organized institutions in Vienna and Lviv that would serve this function. This led to the appearance, for the first time, of a large educated social class within the Ukrainian population in Galicia. As a result, within Austrian Galicia over the next century the Uniate Church ceased being a puppet of foreign interests and became the primary cultural force within

21172-415: The whole village under their spiritual administration ad drove out the Uniate priests." A 19th-century historian Edward Likowski commented on Catherine's death: "The eternal Judge called her to the justice of His judgment seat so that she might account for the rivers of blood and tears that flowed during her reign from millions of Uniates, solely on account of their religious conviction." The dissolution of

21330-414: The winter of 1944–1945, Ukrainian Greek Catholic clergy were summoned to 'reeducation' sessions conducted by the NKVD . Near the end of the war in Europe, the state media began an anti-Ukrainian-Catholic campaign. The creation of the community in 1596 was discredited in publications, which went to great pains to try to prove the Church was conducting activities directed against Ukrainians in the first half of

21488-472: Was actively encouraged by Orthodox people, particularly Ukrainians, Russians and Serbs. As New Russia (Novorossiya, as it was then known) was settled, new Orthodox parishes were created. Construction of cathedrals that demonstrate some of the finest examples of late-19th-century Russian Architecture was undertaken in large cities such as Odesa and Sevastopol . In the late 17th century Poland became less and less influential and internal corruption as well as

21646-459: Was also prompted. The Russian Orthodox Church became viewed by some as an attribute of Soviet domination, and bitter, often violent clashes over church buildings followed with the ROC slowly losing its parishes to the UGCC. The UAOC also followed suit. Sometimes possessors of Church buildings changed several times within days. Although the Soviet law-enforcement did attempt to pacify the almost-warring parties, these were often unsuccessful, as many of

21804-461: Was also relaxed on the clergy allowing them to shave beards (a practice uncommon to Orthodoxy) and conduct liturgy in Ukrainian as opposed to Church Slavonic . The Ukrainian Catholics continued to exist underground for decades and were the subject of vigorous attacks in the state media. The clergy gave up public exercise of their clerical duties, but secretly provided services for many lay people. Many priests took up civilian professions and celebrated

21962-405: Was an exception rather than trend and in locations where the Unia already gave deep roots into the population all of the church property remained in the Catholic and Uniate authority. Also significant was Empress Catherine II 's decree "On the newly acquired territory", according to which most of the Polish magnates retained all their lands and property (thus a significant control over population) in

22120-412: Was built in 996. Following the Great Schism in 1054, the Kievan Rus that incorporated some of the modern Ukraine ended up on the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine side of the divided Christian world. Early on, the Orthodox Christian metropolitans had their seat in Pereyaslav , and later in Kiev. The people of Kiev lost their Metropolitan to Vladimir-Suzdal in 1299 (who retained the title), but gained

22278-478: Was considerable overlap, with more than half of the clerical families also being of petty noble origin), and enjoying a virtual monopoly on education and wealth within western Ukrainian society, the clergy came to form that group's native aristocracy. The clergy adopted Austria's role for them as bringers of culture and education to the Ukrainian countryside. Most Ukrainian social and political movements in Austrian-controlled territory emerged or were highly influenced by

22436-427: Was created with the Union of Brest in 1595/1596, yet its roots go back to the Christianization of Kievan Rus' . Byzantine missionaries exercised decisive influence in the area. The 9th-century mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Great Moravia had particular importance as their work allowed the spread of worship in the Old Church Slavonic language . The Byzantine-Greek influence continued, particularly with

22594-510: Was determined to reinstate Orthodoxy as the majority religion in Ukraine. As Russian troops entered Polish-controlled Ukraine to suppress the Bar Confederation , Catherine "unleashed an Orthodox missionary crusade against the Uniate parishes of Ukraine", and actively incited violence against Latin Catholics, Uniates, and Jews, resulting in atrocities such as the Massacre of Uman . Greek Catholic parishes were pressured to convert to Russian Orthodoxy, and priests who resisted were expelled. More than

22752-429: Was entrusted to the newspaper Giornale di Roma . The Monaldi Brothers ( Italian : Fratelli Monaldi ) began in 1872 to produce their own yearbook entitled The Catholic Hierarchy and the Papal Household for the Year ... ( Italian : La Gerarchia Cattolica e la Famiglia Pontificia per l'Anno ... ). The Vatican Press took over the Gerarchia Cattolica in 1885, thus making it a semi-official publication. It bore

22910-454: Was established between 1809 and 1815. The territory of Kholm eparchy along with Central Polish territories became part of Congress Poland . The situation changed abruptly following Russia's successful suppression of the 1831 Polish uprising , aimed at overthrowing Russian control of the Polish territories. As the uprising was actively supported by the Greek-Catholic church, a crackdown on the Church occurred immediately. The pro-Latin members of

23068-429: Was established on 1807 with its metropolitan see based in Lemberg . Its suffragan dioceses included Chelm and Przemyśl . Following the 1809 Treaty of Schönbrunn , the Austrian Empire was forced to cede most of the territory of the former West Galicia to the Duchy of Warsaw . In 1815, the final decision of Congress of Vienna resulted in the cession of West Galicia to the Russian Empire . The diocese of Chelm, which

23226-455: Was incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church. Those Uniate clergy who refused to join the Russian Orthodox Church (593 out of a total of 1,898 in Ukraine and Belarus) were exiled to the Russian interior or Siberia. By means of mass deportations, persecution and even executions the Uniates were practically eliminated in the Russian Empire. Only a small number of Greek Catholics in the Kholm Governorate managed to preserve their faith. Within

23384-452: Was located in West Galicia, ended up under the Russian jurisdiction. The Russian emperor Pavel I of Russia restored the Uniate church, which was reorganized with three eparchies suffragan to metropolitan bishop Joasaphat Bulhak. The church was allowed to function without restraint (calling its adherents Basilians ). The clergy soon split into pro-Catholic and pro-Russian, however, with the former tending to convert to Latin Catholicism, while

23542-422: Was made illegal (its legality was partially restored in 1607), its property confiscated, and Orthodox believers faced persecution and discrimination which became an important reason for large numbers of Ukrainians to emigrate to Tsardom of Russia following the Union. The eastward spread of the Union of Brest led to violent clashes, for example, assassination of the Greek Catholic Archbishop Josaphat Kuntsevych by

23700-432: Was mixed. With many clergy members and lay believers turning to the ROC, some adamantly refused. As a result of this the Patriarchate of Moscow could now legally lay claim to any Orthodox church property that was within the territory of its uncontested jurisdiction, which it did. Some believers refused to accept liquidation of their churches and for nearly 40 years the UAOC and UGCC existed in Western Ukraine underground led by

23858-462: Was more popular among the younger priests. The Russophilia of the Galician Ruthenians was particularly strong during the mid-19th century, although by the end of that century the Russophiles had declined in importance relative to the Ukrainophiles. The Austrian authorities during this time began to be more and more involved in the power-struggle with Russia for the rule of the Balkans , as the declining Ottoman Empire withdrew, and in so doing opposed

24016-420: Was neglected by Polish authorities, causing resentment towards Polish rule as well. As the result of being alienated from both Polish Latin Catholicism and Russian Orthodoxy, the Greek Catholic church in Ukraine had developed its own separate, Ukrainian identity. Greek Catholic bishops of Ukraine such as Josaphat Kuntsevych are considered the precursors of Ukrainian nationalism . After the partitions of Poland,

24174-402: Was reinterpreted when Pope John XXIII (1958–1963) chose to reuse the ordinal XXIII, citing "twenty-two Johns of indisputable legitimacy." This was reflected in the 1963 Annuario Pontificio , which treated Alexander V and the first John XXIII as antipopes. Many churches try to obtain accurate ecclesiastical statistics by actively counting their congregants. The Annuario Pontificio superseded

24332-509: Was so great that western Ukrainians were accused of wanting to create a theocracy in western Ukraine by their Polish rivals. Among the political trends that emerged, the Christian social movement was particularly linked to the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Many people saw the Austrians as having saved the Ukrainians and their Church from the Poles, though it was the Poles who set into motion the Greek-Catholic cast of their church. After World War I , Ukrainian Greek Catholics found themselves under

24490-421: Was strongly discouraged. The Catholics were strictly forbidden to convert to Orthodoxy, and the marriages between Catholics and Orthodox were frowned upon. Orthodox subjects had been increasingly barred from high offices of state. In order to oppose such restrictions and to reverse cultural polonization of Orthodox bishops, the Ecumenical Patriarch encouraged the activity of the Orthodox urban communities called

24648-647: Was strongly supported by its diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. Emigration to the U.S. and Canada, which had begun in the 1870s, increased after World War II. According to Karel C. Berkhoff , during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine , the treatment of Christian churches by German authorities varied from denomination to denomination. The Nazi authorities were friendly towards Ukrainian Protestants and treated them with "magnanimity", and were left unsuppressed; pacifist denominations were specifically favoured as well. Meanwhile, Greek and Latin Catholics were harshly persecuted, something that Berkhoff attributes to "Nazi hostility to

24806-436: Was the then ROC's Ukrainian Exarchate, which took place in the central, eastern and southern Ukraine. In the former-uniate areas of western Ukraine things were more turbulent. As UGCC survived in diaspora and in the underground they took their chance and were immediately revived in Ukraine, where in the wake of general liberalization of the Soviet policies in the late-1980s the activization of Ukrainian national political movements

24964-539: Was then known as 'Little Russia' (now Ukraine ), the pressure of the Russian Government "utterly wiped out" Greek Catholicism, and "some 7,000,000 of the Uniats there were compelled, partly by force and partly by deception, to become part of the Greek Orthodox Church". In the years following and preceding the Partitions, Catherine the Great played a huge rule in forcefully dismantling the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine. She expressed disdain towards both Greek and Latin Catholicism while praising Protestant denominations, and

#868131