Georgian Catholic Church

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Prayer card of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Constantinople

The Georgian Catholic Church was not an independent Eastern Catholic Church in communion fellowship with the Roman Pope .

The Georgian Catholic communities of the Byzantine rite emerged from the establishment of the Georgian monastery (with church , school, hostel and other annexes) in the Feriköy district of Istanbul and an associated institution in Montauban, France . The former was established in 1860–1861 by the Georgian monk Pétre Chariszhirashvili . Chariszhiraschwili was also significantly involved in the establishment in France at the end of the 19th century.

The Georgian scholars Michel Tamarati (Alexander Tamarashvili; 1858–1911; buried in the Pantheon of Tbilisi in 1978) and Michael Tarchnischvili (1897–1958) come from this religious community .

In tsarist Russia, Catholics had to choose between the Latin or the Armenian rite; the use of the Byzantine was forbidden. In contrast to what was generally possible in Georgia at the time, the Byzantine service in the Istanbul church was also celebrated in (old) Georgian, not in Church Slavonic.

The founding of monasteries in the Eastern Church was preceded by a long history of Georgian Catholics of the Latin rite . In Georgia , where the Franciscans had resided since 1233 and the Dominicans since 1240, and where there had been a Latin diocese between 1329 and 1507 , Catholicism began to be promoted again in 1626. These efforts reached their climax in the shape of the Georgian monk and scholar Sulchan-Saba Orbeliani , who joined the Roman communion . The Catholic mission came to an end with the expulsion of foreign missionaries by Tsarist Russia in 1845. At that time most Georgian Catholics belonged to the Latin rite and a minority to the Armenian (Armenian Catholic Diocese of Artvin). Only Tsar Nicholas II allowed the formation of the Latin diocese of Tiraspol (with its seat in Saratow on the Volga) for southern Russia , which included Georgia. This was not a major problem insofar as the Byzantine rite was only used by a few Georgians and was not particularly encouraged by the church.

The Georgian Catholic Eastern Church, which had its center in Tbilisi , already had around 12,000 believers as early as 1920. The descendants of their parishioners are now Catholics of the Latin rite. A “self-sufficient” ( sui juris ) Georgian Catholic Church did not and does not exist, not even its own diocese.

In 2002, the ecumenically Christian “ Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani Institute for Theology, Philosophy, History and Culture” was founded in Tbilisi for the training of lay theologians and financed by Renovabis and the Diocese of Tbilisi . In 2003 the institute received state recognition. The rector is the dogmatist Vaja Vardidze .

See also

literature

  • Manana Javakhishvili: Le monastère catholique géorgien de Montauban . In: Revue d'Histoire de l'Eglise de France 226 (2005) 91-105.

Web links

Commons : Georgian Catholic Church  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files