Archdiocese of Vrhbosna
| Archdiocese of Vrhbosna | |
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| Basic data | |
|---|---|
| Country | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Diocesan bishop | Vinko Cardinal Puljić |
| Coadjutor | Tomo Vukšić (appointed) |
| Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus | Pero Sudar |
| Vicar General | Mato Zovkić |
| founding | 1735 |
| surface | 22,401 km² |
| Parishes | 155 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| Residents | 2,000,000 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| Catholics | 162,711 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| proportion of | 8.1% |
| Diocesan priest | 151 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| Religious priest | 186 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| Catholics per priest | 483 |
| Permanent deacons | 1 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| Friars | 226 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| Religious sisters | 230 (2017 / AP 2018 ) |
| rite | Roman rite |
| Liturgical language | Croatian |
| cathedral | Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Jesus ( Katedrala Srca Isusova ) |
| Website | vrhbosanska-nadbiskupija.org |
| Suffragan dioceses |
Banja Luka Mostar-Duvno (-Trebinje-Mrkan) Skopje |
The Archdiocese of Vrhbosna ( Croatian and Bosnian Vrhbosanska nadbiskupija ; German accordingly High Bosnia , tip of Bosnia ; Latin Archidioecesis Vrhbosnensis o Seraiensis ) based in Sarajevo is the only Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Bosnia and Herzegovina . Three dioceses are subordinate to the archbishopric. The Roman Catholic Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus also the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna are closely linked to the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia . The archbishopric has always been part of the Church under the Croats and contributed significantly to the preservation and maintenance of Catholic traditions in an Ottoman-Muslim dominated environment. The current Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna (Sarajevo) is Vinko Puljić .
Roman Catholic Cathedral in Sarajevo , built from 1884 to 1889
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Early Christianity
In the area of today's diocese Vrhbosna ( Sarajevo ) (Vrhbosna was the old Bosnian name before the Turkish conquest), the church was organized in Roman times . When exactly Christianity came to this area cannot be precisely dated. However, it is certain that it grew stronger between the 1st and 5th centuries. After the administrative division of the Roman province of Illyricum into Pannonia and Dalmatia with its metropolises Sirmium (today Sremska Mitrovica ) and Salona (today Archdiocese of Split-Makarska ), the northern part belonged to today's Archdiocese of Sarajevo; while the ecclesiastical province of Salona included several dioceses in today's territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina , whose names are mainly known from the acts of the two Synods of Salona (530 and 583). One of the dioceses that were in the area of today's Archdiocese of Sarajevo was Bistua Nova or Bistues (between Zenica and Travnik ), which was headed by Bishop Andrija in 533. A second diocese was the Martari diocese. It must have been north of the Jablaničko jezero lake or near the source of the Vrbas . The archbishopric of Sirmium (582) and Salona (614) were destroyed by the devastation of the Avars and in the subsequent migration period and the Slavs' conquest of the Balkans from the late 6th century , and their demise also represents the end of all Dioceses and, to a large extent, Christianity in these areas. However, Christianity was not to remain overthrown by the devastation.
The Croatians
In the 7th and 8th centuries Christianity was to awaken to new life through proselytizing among the Croats who came inland from the Adriatic coast. Large parts of Bosnia came to the renewed Archdiocese of Split-Makarska (the successor diocese of Salona ), which was later recognized as its head by the dioceses. With Christianity, the Croatians also adopted the civilization and culture of the Romanized population of the area in which they settled. So also elements of social life, the way of life and piety, which at the beginning, however, still had more pagan than Christian features. More intensive religious instruction only came after the new and stronger church organization, that is, after the foundation of the dioceses.
Bosnia was first mentioned in the 9th century, as a small region at the source of the Bosna River . By the 15th century it developed into a relatively large kingdom in terms of area, which after the extinction of the Croatian ruling dynasty expanded north to the Save and west to Jajce and Bihać . The lot of the Bosnian diocese is closely linked to the history of the Bosnian state. It is first mentioned in the middle of the 11th century. The seat was Brdo in the parish Vrhbosna (Sarajevo). Initially, the bishop was suffragan bishop of the Metropolitan of Split. Soon, however, the Metropolitan of Bar (Montenegro) showed ambitions to get the diocese under his jurisdiction . It reported also the Metropolitan of the Archdiocese of Kalocsa-Kecskemét ( Hungary ) as a pretender to this bishopric with the aim of his power (at this time already with the Croatian crown with the help of the Hungarian crown personal union united) extended to Bosnia. Since the Hungarian-Croatian kings asserted their rights to Bosnia as a vassal state (Banat) and a Hungarian sat on the archbishopric of Split, the ruler of Bosnia, Ban Kulin , divided the diocese into the Archdiocese of Dubrovnik .
As early as the 12th century (and until the fall under Ottoman rule in 1463), the Bosnian state was torn internally by the religious feuds between the so-called "Bosnian Church" (Bosnian Christians) and the Catholic Church. The country's bishops finally looked for a more peaceful spot and went with their cathedral chapter outside of the country to their lands in Đakovo (Slavonia, northern Croatia). There they submitted to the Metropolitan of Kalocsa and received ten parishes from the diocese of Fünfkirchen (Pécs). They never set foot on Bosnian soil again and they administered their diocese through their vicars . For this reason, the Croatian ecclesiastical province of Syrmia, later called Đakovo-Syrmia, today the Archdiocese of akovo-Osijek , had the historical name “Bosnian ecclesiastical province” until 2008.
The "Bosnian Christians", who were basically most likely adherents of the old unreformed church practice and who opposed the new forms of the feudal church in Europe with all their might, not only drew missionaries ( Dominicans and Franciscans ) into the country, but also the Hungarian-Croatian kings who undertook veritable crusades , ostensibly to protect Catholic orthodoxy in Bosnia, but in reality to conquer the country.
Ottoman rule
This quarrel and also the turmoil among the Bosnian princes played the country inexorably into the hands of the Turks . In the 14th century, the Ottomans advanced with increasing force on the Balkan Peninsula and took one small state after another. They conquered the territory of Bosnia little by little, and also through the magnates in the country who wanted to power at any cost. So Bosnia was surrendered to the Turks by its own children of the country, by its nobility, who made a clandestine deal with the Turks, long before the fateful year 1463, when Bosnia fell "in silence" in the vernacular.
The consequences of the Ottoman conquest of the Balkan Peninsula were catastrophic for the Catholic Church . The bishops' seats throughout the country were orphaned because the bishops appointed by the court in Vienna - in order to further assert its right to be appointed bishops and its claims to these areas - lived at the courts far away from their dioceses. In this way, until the foundation of the De Propaganda Fide congregation in Rome (1622), entire areas under Turkish rule were without pastoral care. This situation for Catholics in the Ottoman Empire was made even more difficult by the fact that they had no regular church administration, because their administrative center was in the Vatican and was the driving force in all campaigns against the Ottomans over the centuries. For this reason, a large part of the Catholics moved to Istria , to the Hungarian Burgenland and across the sea to Italy ( Moliseslawen ) during the Ottoman period . Or they joined the Serbian Orthodox Church or converted to Islam .
In addition, numerous Orthodox Christians left their homeland at that time and settled in Catholic-Croatian areas on the border and inland. In this way, the ethnic and religious image of the population of Bosnia was fundamentally changed. Unlike in other Turkish-occupied areas, the Franciscans in Bosnia held out with their Catholic people. They fought, duly dressed in Turkish robes, at the Sublime Porte for the rights of the Catholics and over time extended their work to the entire Ottoman Empire, from Hungary to the Adriatic coast and even to the Black Sea. In addition to the Franciscans, there were secular priests and some missionaries from other religious orders in Bosnia, especially Jesuits and Dominicans. They could not long stand against the Franciscans, who fully held the field.
Start-up
In 1735 the Apostolic Vicariate of Bosnia was founded and directed by the Franciscans as Apostolic Vicars with the rank of bishop. Under the circumstances mentioned, the Franciscans were able to develop a relatively lively spiritual and literary activity. Her works first appeared in Bosnian ( Bosančica ) and later in Latin script. But despite all efforts they could not change the course of history and help the Church in Bosnia to develop organically. It was only after the popular uprising and the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878 that the prerequisites for restoring the regular church organization were created. In 1881 Pope Leo XIII created through his bull “Ex hac augusta” in Sarajevo (the old Vrhbosna) the Archdiocese of Sarajevo, with a metropolitan at the head. The newly formed dioceses Banja Luka and Mostar Duvno (- Trebinje-Mrkan ) were subordinated to him as suffragan dioceses. The same bull also called for the creation of the cathedral chapter in Sarajevo and a central seminar for the training of the diocesan clergy of the entire ecclesiastical province. The first archbishop was Josef Stadler , priest of the Archdiocese of Zagreb and professor of fundamental theology at the local theological faculty.
1918-1991
After the death of Archbishop Stadler and under the changed political circumstances of the new state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ), Archbishop Ivan Šarić took over the leadership of the Archdiocese (1922-1960). In the chaos of war between 1941 and 1945 and in the post-war period, which was dominated by communists, the archbishopric suffered heavy losses. Archbishop Šarić went into exile, all educational and educational institutions and dioceses were stripped from the church, the nuns had to leave the country, priests were imprisoned and not a few of them never returned from prisons. During the absence of Archbishop Šarić (1945-1960), the archbishopric was administered by Marko Alaupović , first as provisional general and later as vicar general and also Archbishop Šarić's death, then as archbishop in the years (1960-1968). His successor, Dr. Smiljan-Franjo Čekada (1968–1978), was able to reopen the diocesan seminary in Sarajevo in 1969. After his death, Marko Jozinović became archbishop (1977–1989). Pope John Paul II appointed his successor Vinko Puljić , who has headed the archdiocese since 1990, to his college of cardinals , so that Bosnia now has its own cardinal for the first time in its history .
The archbishopric today has an area of 22,401 square kilometers and is divided into four archdeaconates and 13 deaconates . The Archdiocese has placed itself under the protection of the Most Holy Heart of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph.
1991-1995
Before the recent war , which began in Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992 (in eastern Herzegovina as early as the fall of 1991 with the attacks by the Yugoslav People's Army and Serbian-Montenegrin paramilitary units on the Croatian Catholic village of Ravno ), the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna had 528,000 Catholics in 144 parishes and 204 diocesan priests who worked together with the Franciscans of the Province of Bosna Argentina (240 religious priests) as pastors. Numerous diocesan priests worked outside the archdiocese, in Croatia and other countries. In addition, 4 Jesuits and 2 Dominicans were active in the diocese. There were two universities in Sarajevo, one for the diocesan clergy with around 65 to 75 candidates for the priesthood and 192 future lay theologians at the newly founded theological institute. The Franciscan order maintained a grammar school in Visoko , while the high school students of the diocese went to the archbishop's grammar school in Zadar . There were numerous religious sisters in the archbishopric. Three religious orders maintained their own province, the School Sisters of St. Francis , the Servants of the Child Jesus and the Sisters of Mercy of St. Vincent de Paul . In addition to these religious women, 335 of whom were active in the Archdiocese of Sarajevo, there were also sisters from other communities. They had 24 monasteries and were active in community work and in nursing the sick and the elderly.
After the Second World War , the Catholics in Bosnia, with foreign support, succeeded in rebuilding or renovating the buildings that the state had left them, despite all obstacles from the state. The Archdiocese of Vrhbosna (Sarajevo) has no noteworthy architectural monuments, as they all perished in the 450 years of Ottoman rule. Only three of the old monasteries from pre-Turkish times have survived. They all contain many treasures that are valuable for the history of the Roman Catholic Church in these areas: archives, libraries, collections of paintings and liturgical equipment. Today there are 200,000 Catholics living in the Archdiocese of Sarajevo, many not in their hometowns. In fifty parishes it is still not possible for the priests to be active in pastoral care. Most of the parishes have only a small number of Catholics left. The archdiocese has 208 diocesan priests (110 of them within the mother diocese), 94 of them in the pastoral care, three Jesuits, three Salesians , one Dominican, 150 nuns, 140 Franciscans.
Consequences of war
From the Croatian point of view, the war began in autumn 1991 with the Serbian-Montenegrin attack on the Croatian-Catholic village of Ravno in Eastern Herzegovina. After the short war in Slovenia and the subsequent aggression against Croatia - under the pretext that the Serbs living there were threatened by the Croats - now, this time under the pretext of the threat from the Croats and Bosniaks , Bosnia-Herzegovina hit the full force Serbian war machine. 62 parishes in the archbishopric were literally wiped out, including almost all of the archive material, because hardly any pastor managed to save the church records. When the Serbian units had taken control of 70% of the country, displaced persons moved to free parts of the country or to third countries. Croats and Bosniaks, who initially defended their territories together against the Serbian attacks, later fell victim to distrust and suspicion. This also resulted in fighting among them. During the chaos of war between 1992 and 1995, the number of believers in the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna (Sarajevo) shrank from 528,000 to around 200,000 Catholics .
2000-2006
On May 24, 2000, Pope John Paul II reestablished the 4th century diocese of Skopje in Macedonia and made it subordinate to the ecclesiastical province of Vrhbosna as a suffragan diocese.
On January 4, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI. Dismissed the Metropolitan Region of Vrhbosna from the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and placed it temporarily under the administration of the State Secretariat , with the intention of placing it under the ordinary jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Bishops .
See also
literature
- The Crucified Church in Bosnia-Herzegovina, The Destruction of Catholic Sacred Buildings in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Edited by the Bishops' Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Croatian Information Center, 1997, ISBN 953-6058-22-7 .
- Cölestin Wolfsgrüber: Archdiocese of Serajevo . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , Volume 13, Robert Appleton Company, New York 1912.
