Albanian Greek Catholic Church

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Albanian Greek Catholic Church
Basic data
Jurisdiction status sui iuris
rite Byzantine rite
Liturgical language Albanian
calendar Gregorian calendar
Establishment date 1628
Seat Vlora
statistics
Jurisdictions 1
Believers <4000
Bishops 1
Parishes 9
Diocesan priest 1
Religious priest 12
Template: Infobox rite church / maintenance / picture is missing

The Albanian Greek Catholic Church is a separate jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in southern Albania , where the majority of Christians are Orthodox . Today the Byzantine rite is hardly celebrated any more. The liturgy according to the Byzantine rite lives on among Albanians but in Italy in the Italo-Albanian Church , another Eastern Catholic Church .

Liturgical language is Albanian ; the Gregorian calendar applies .

history

The conversion to Christianity took place in Albania in the north under Latin influence and in the south under Greek influence . Although the Byzantine rite was followed in many churches, the region was part of the Patriarchate of Rome until 731 when the Byzantine Emperor Leo III. in retaliation for the resistance of Pope Gregory III. to his iconoclastic attitude the whole of Illyricum orientale was assigned to the Patriarchate of Constantinople . The schism of 1054 also divided the Albanian area.

The Roman rite had long been established in the north of the country . From 1628, when an Orthodox archbishop converted to the Catholic Church, some parishes in Epirus were united with Rome. They probably hoped for support in the fight against the Muslim Ottomans . A Catholic mission was active in the region of Himara between 1660 and 1765 , until efforts had to be abandoned because of the resistance of the Ottoman rulers.

In 1895, some villages in the Shpat Mountains southeast of Elbasan decided to become Catholic and demanded a bishop of their rite, which the consular representatives of Russia and Montenegro protested. Around the same time, another group of Greek Catholics came into being in Elbasan around the archimandrite Jorgji Germanos (1858–1928), the nephew of the Metropolitan . In recognition of the role of the Catholic Church in the Albanian national movement Rilindja and the founding of the state, there were individual conversions . The community in Elbasan was able to inaugurate its church in 1929 and reached a peak of around 400 people. The number of Greek Catholics remained small (in 1940 there were around 4,400 Catholics in all of southern Albania, including many Italians), and also met resistance from the government and the newly established Autocephalous Orthodox Church . Only in 1939, after King Zogu had fled , southern Albania was given its own jurisdiction under the supervision of an apostolic administrator . The Curia wanted to promote the rising Catholicism in southern Albania and established the Apostolic Administration of Southern Albania under the direction of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches . Religious brothers from the monastery of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata , who had been active in Elbasan since the 1920s, founded mission stations in Korça , Vlora , Berat and Fier , where services were held in Latin and Greek. Franciscan conventuals , which also followed the Byzantine rite, founded further missions. However, the efforts were  hardly successful - sometimes because of their proximity to the Italian occupiers . The Jesuit Sacred Heart Church, which opened in Tirana in 1939 , had an altar with an iconostasis for the Byzantine rite . After less than seven years, the Italian administrator was expelled from Albania; Contact with the Greek Catholics under the communist regime in Albania was impossible.

It was not until 1992 that a new Apostolic Administrator could be appointed. First the office was given to the Apostolic Nuncio in Tirana, Archbishop Ivan Dias . At the beginning of the 1990s there were only around 800 Catholics left in southern Albania. After Dias was transferred in 1996, he was succeeded by Hil Kabashi , a Kosovar- born Franciscan who was ordained a bishop in 1997. Giovanni Peragine currently holds the office of Apostolic Administrator.

The Byzantine rite should only be practiced in one community in Elbasan.

organization

There are no indications that the church has ever established an organization beyond individual parishes or outside the apostolic administration or has formally united.

Data on the Apostolic Administration

Catholic Church of Vlora

In 2010, 3558 Catholics lived in eight parishes with eleven churches in the Apostolic Administration of Southern Albania , where the church is located. The vast majority of Catholics practice the Roman rite. In 2010, the faithful were looked after by a diocesan priest and eleven religious priests as well as 16 friars and 88 nuns who look after various schools and social institutions. Bishop is Hil Kabashi .

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Jean-François Mayer: Catholicism and Orthodoxy: a forgotten page of the history of uniatism in Albania. In: Religioscope. January 4, 2010, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  2. ^ Catholic Rites and Churches. In: www.ewtn.com. August 22, 2007, archived from the original on July 11, 2019 ; accessed on January 15, 2020 (English).
  3. ^ Albanian Greek Catholic Church. In: damian-hungs.de. Retrieved January 8, 2017 .
  4. ↑ a b c Constantin Simon: Albania, un mosaico di religioni . In: La Civiltà Cattolica . No. IV , 2005, p. 338–352 ( article online ( Memento of December 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive )).
  5. ↑ a b c Markus WE Peters: History of the Catholic Church in Albania from the Paris Peace Conference in 1919/20 to the pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II in 1993 . Dissertation. Bonn 2001, p. 236–238 (later published under the title History of the Catholic Church in Albania 1919–1993 (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 3-447-04784-4 )).
  6. ↑ Peters (2001), pp. 100, 103 f.
  7. ↑ Peters (2001), p. 102.
  8. ↑ Sui Juris Churches XIII: The Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church. In: branemrys.blogspot.com. September 19, 2015, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  9. ↑ a b Annuario Pontificio 2011
  10. ^ The Eastern Catholic Churches. In: www.maryourmother.net. Retrieved January 7, 2017 (English).