Diocese of Križevci

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Diocese of Križevci
Map of the Diocese of Križevci
Basic data
Rite church Byzantine Church in Croatia and Serbia
Country Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Slovenia
Ecclesiastical province Zagreb
Metropolitan bishopric Archdiocese of Zagreb
Diocesan bishop Sedis vacancy
Apostolic Administrator Milan Stipic
Emeritus diocesan bishop Nikola Kekic
founding June 17, 1777
surface 127,994 km²
Parishes 44 (2006)
Residents 4,494,749 (2006)
Catholics 21,480 (2007)
proportion of 0.5%
Diocesan priest 28 (2006)
Religious priest 2 (2006)
Catholics per priest 716
Permanent deacons 0 (2006)
Friars 2 (2006)
Religious sisters 60 (2006)
rite Byzantine rite
Liturgical language Croatian
Church Slavic
Greek
cathedral Most Holy Trinity Križevci
Co-cathedral Co-cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius
Zagreb
Website krizevacka-eparhija.com
Holy Trinity Cathedral
Co- cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius (Konkatedrala Sv. Ćirila i Metoda) in Gornji Grad a district of Zagreb

The Greek Catholic diocese Križevci ( latin Dioecesis Crisiensis , Croat Križevačka Biskupija or Križevačka eparhija ) is a Uniated Eparchie and a suffragan which the Erzbistum Zagreb in Croatia is assumed. The diocese was founded in 1777 on the initiative of Empress Maria Theresa by Pope Pius VI. founded. This foundation is noted in the bull ( Charitas illa ). Since 1966 the seat of the bishop is no longer Križevci (German: Kreutz), but Zagreb . Before that, the first bishops had their seat in the Marča Monastery from 1611 . In 1777 the seat was moved to Gornji Tkalec and in 1801 to the former Franciscan monastery in Križevci . Church Slavonic and Croatian are used as liturgical languages today . The eparchy represents not only the Catholics of the Byzantine rite in Croatia, but also in Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina . The diocese of Križevci is under the protection of St. Michael the Archangel , St. Basil of Caesarea , St. Gregory Nazianzen who are counted among the church fathers , and under the protection of St. John Chrysostom .

In Zagreb, the diocese has its own seminary , which was founded in 1681 by Bishop Pavao Zorčić. Milan Stipić has been the Apostolic Administrator of Križevci since March 18, 2019 .

history

Since the middle of the 15th century, Orthodox Christians of various ethnic groups fled in large numbers from the Ottoman sphere of influence to Croatia, which was under Habsburg rule. They were initially settled in the area of ​​the military border and, after the Turks were driven back at the end of the 17th century, also in Slavonia and Vojvodina . In the area around Križevci there were initially so-called Wallachians , as they were referred to in contemporary sources, since Wallachians in the Ottoman Empire also referred to a social status, mostly associated with more rights than most of the Christian subjects, the Reâyâ , had , and to which various, predominantly Orthodox ethnic groups belonged. Pastor Martin Dubravić, the son of a family that practiced the Greek rite, performed important pastoral activities among the newcomers . He came from the town of Ivanić-Grad , was financially supported by the Ljubljana Bishop Thomas Hren and received a general theological education. He later became a canon of the Zagreb Chapter . From 1618 to 1628 the Roman Catholic Bishop Petar Domitrović stood by his side . Alongside Martin Dubravić, he was the key figure in the unification negotiations with Orthodox ethnic groups. The place of birth of the Bishop of Zagreb can no longer be precisely located. However, the opinions of ecclesiastical historians assume two possibilities: Oštrc or Jastrebarsko near Ivanić-Grad.

The Marča Monastery was initially the center of the union movement and the residence of the first United Bishop Simeon Vratanja , to whom Martin Dubravić served as a delegate. Bishop Simeon Vratanja had very good relations with the Zagreb bishop Petar Domitrović. The Marča Monastery was located between the towns of Ivanić-Grad and Čazma , east of Zagreb, which belonged to the Zagreb diocese. Pope Paul V canonically founded the Marča Monastery on November 21, 1611 (papal breve "Divina Majestis arbitris" ) and appointed Simeon Vratanja bishop that same year. This became secular by Ferdinand III. approved. Simeon Vratanja came from Slavonia, from the Remete monastery near Orahovica . In church history, Bishop Simeon Vratanja appeared as a monk in the General Council of Varaždin . He is the central figure in the efforts for sectarian peace and was the first uniate bishop of Croatia.

At the beginning of the 17th century, when the Archbishop of Esztergom , Péter Pázmány , vigorously pushed for the recatholization of the Hungarian countries, Pope Paul V also appointed an Episcopal Vicar for the Christians of the Eastern Rite and subordinated to the Bishop of Zagreb. The aim was to integrate the Orthodox subjects of the Hungarian crown into the Roman Catholic Church . The lack of independence of the vicars and the lack of consideration for the needs of the Orthodox believers meant that this project was only partially successful. When in 1690 thousands of Serbs after a failed uprising against the Ottomans with their Patriarch Arsenije III. Crnojević at the top fled to the Habsburg territories of Syrmia , Slavonia and Vojvodina , and many of the United Catholics converted to Orthodoxy again. They were granted freedom to practice their religion by Emperor Leopold .

Empress Maria Theresa recognized the organizational deficits in relation to the Catholics of the Byzantine rite and therefore initiated the establishment of an independent hierarchy for them. Therefore, in 1777 the Diocese of Kreutz was founded in Slavonia, to which the Ruthenians in the Batschka were now also subordinate (who were previously under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Kalocsa ). Until 1852 it belonged to the ecclesiastical province of Esztergom. After the diocese of Zagreb was elevated to an archbishopric, the Križevci eparchy became part of the new Croatian ecclesiastical province.

The episcopal residence was set up in a former Franciscan monastery . Its monastery church served as the cathedral (St. Trinity) of the Greek Catholic bishop. During the Habsburg era, the jurisdiction only extended to the United Catholics in Croatia-Slavonia.

Since the founding of Yugoslavia in 1918, all Uniate on its territory fell under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Križevci. These included such diverse groups as the Uniate Romanians in the Banat , many Ruthenians in the so-called Vojvodina, some Uniate Serbs in Dalmatia and some Greek-Catholic Macedonians and Albanians in the south of the country. The small, financially weak diocese was completely overwhelmed by the pastoral care in this vast area. Due to the tense Vatican-Yugoslav relations, both before and after the Second World War , a restructuring of the pastoral care districts for the Uniate could not be undertaken until the beginning of this century. In Macedonia and Serbia (with Vojvodina ), which earlier also belonged to Križevci, separate exarchates for Catholics of the Eastern Rite were set up in Strumica (near Skopje) and 2003 in Ruski Krstur . Since then, the Exarchate has acted as a representation of a Croatian Greek Catholic Church , which has not yet been formally established as such.

Greek Catholic emigrants from Croatia founded numerous church congregations in the USA and Canada . However, they are subordinate to the local bishops of the Byzantine rite.

November 2012 - on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the renewed unity of the Greek Catholic Church in Croatia with the apostolic seat in Rome ( Union of Marča ) - Križevci hosted the 15th meeting of the bishops of the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite.

Distribution and ethnic groups

Church of the Annunciation in Pribić near Krašić in northwest Croatia

The Eastern Catholic believers, who call themselves Greek Catholics , came from a wide variety of United Churches: from the one already mentioned in Croatia , from the Ukrainian one in Brest-Litovsk (completed in 1596, included areas of today's states Poland , Belarus and Ukraine ), from the Ruthenian one from Uzhgorod (1646) in the Ukrainian Transcarpathian , from the Church of Transylvania (1700) in Romania and in Bulgaria from the Church of Kilikis in the Aegean part of Macedonia (1860). The Ruthenians from the (then Hungarian) Carpathians were settled by the Austrian state from 1745 in Batschka , which had just been liberated from the Turks at that time . The Ukrainian Ruthenians were also mainly settled in the area around Banja Luka towards the end of the 19th century. The Eastern Catholic Bulgarians descend from Orthodox who, under the leadership of their Metropolitan Josif Sokolski, entered into a union with the Roman Catholic Church in (as mentioned above) Kilkis near Saloniki in 1860 .

The number of Greek Catholic Christians has declined sharply over the past few decades. Reasons include: emigration to other countries or assimilation in Roman Catholic areas, especially in the cities. Mixed marriages according to the western rite are also the main reasons for the dwindling number of believers. According to the schematic of the Križevci diocese from 1974, there were 58,778 believers in the entire diocese in 62 parishes - seven of which had already expired. In 1990 the schematism indicates a number of 48,970 believers in a total of 52 parishes.

In the Republic of Croatia around 15,600 of the total of 21,500 Greek Catholic diocesans live in 32 parishes. There are 22 active priests for them. 16 of them are secular clergy from the diocese of Križevci. Some monasteries with around 100 nuns following the Greek rite are also assigned to the diocese. Of the Greek Catholic believers in Croatia, 7,830 are Russians and 6,294 are Croatians. 2,295 believers are Ukrainians. In the neighboring countries of Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the diocese has 1,298 and 4,776 members, respectively.

structure

The diocese is divided into the four vicariates Žumberak , Slavonia - Syrmia , Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina .

Vicariate Žumberak (Žumberački vikarijat)

  • Deanery Žumberak (Žumberački dekanat) with 9 parishes in Croatia and Slovenia:
  • Deanery Stolni (Stolni dekanat) with 7 parishes and 2 pastoral centers in Croatia:
    • Parishes
    • Pastoral centers
      • Pastoralni Centar Preobraženja Gospodnjeg in the town of Jastrebarsko
      • Duhovni Centar Praoca Abrahama in the city of Samobor

Vicariate Slavonia-Syrmia (Slavonsko srijemski vikarijat)

Greek Catholic Vicariate in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Grkokatolički vikarijat u Bosni i Hercegovini)

  • The parish of the Vicariate of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Parohija Bosansko-Hercegovačkog vikarijata) comprises 10 parishes and 1 pastoral center:
    • Parishes
    • Pastoral centers
      • Ukrajinski grkokatolički duhovni centar in the city of Prnjavor

Vicariate of Dalmatia (Dalmatinski vikarijat)

See also

literature

  • Goran Ivanišević: Grkokatolička katedrala Presvetoga Trojstva i biskupska rezidencija u Križevcima. Zagreb 2000.
  • Ernst Christoph Suttner: Eastern church life in Croatia using the example of the history of the Križevci diocese. In: Gazophylacium 8 (2003), pp. 100-106.
  • Niko Ikić: The term “Union” in the process of creation of the united Diocese of Marča (Križevci). An ecclesiological-juridical investigation based on a historical exposition. St. Ottilien 1989. ISBN 3-88096-832-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Statistics 2007 (PDF; 130 kB), from www.cnewa.org, accessed on March 8, 2008.
  2. ↑ Together in Christ in the year of faith. 15th Meeting of the Bishops of the Catholic Churches of the Oriental Rite, Zagreb-Križevci, Croatia, 22.-25. November 2012 ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Press release Consilium Conferentiarum Episcoporum Europae, St. Gallen, November 26, 2012 (doc, eurocathinfo.eu).  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.eurocathinfo.eu
  3. ^ Rudolf Grulich: The Uniate Church in Macedonia, 1956-1919, Würzburg, 1997; Marlene Kurz: Christians under Islamic rule: the zimmi administration in the Ottoman Empire in Thede Kahl, Cay Lienau (ed.): Christians and Muslims: Inter-ethnic coexistence in south-eastern European peripheral areas , Verlag LIT Verlag Münster, 2009, p. 96; Friedrich Heyer: The Catholic Church from 1648 to 1870 , Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963, p. 189ff.
  4. ↑ Glas Koncila: Grkokatolici na Žumberku ( Memento from February 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Vikarijati ( Memento of the original from August 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.krizevacka-eparhija.com

Coordinates: 46 ° 1 ′ 50.6 ″  N , 16 ° 32 ′ 36.2 ″  E