Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia

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Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Humenné

The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia ( Czech : Pravoslavna církev v Českých zemích a na Slovensku ; Slovak : Pravoslavna cirkev v českých krajinách a na Slovensku , and Czech-Slovak Orthodox Church ) is an autocephalous Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Rite in the Territory of the Czech Republic and Slovakia .

It emerged in 1993 from the previous "Orthodox Church of Czechoslovakia" (Czech: Pravoslavná církev v Československu , Slovak: Pravoslávna cirkev v Československu , also Czechoslovak Orthodox Church ).

present

Today the Church has around 75,000 believers, 23,000 of whom live in the Czech Republic and 51,000 in Slovakia. It is divided into four eparchies ; are in the Czech Republic

are in Slovakia

The head of the church has the rank of metropolitan and can have his seat either in Prague or in Prešov. The four bishops together form the Holy Synod , the highest canonical organ of the Church. It has 170 priests in 242 parishes, runs eight monasteries and one high school. Priests are trained at the Prešov Orthodox Theological Faculty and at a study center in Olomouc.

Origin and history

After the violent suppression of the Slavic mission by Kyrill and Method in the 9th century, the area of ​​today's Czech Republic and Slovakia fell into the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church after the schism of 1054 . Dissatisfaction with the close connection of the Roman Catholic Church to the House of Habsburg and the Habsburg Monarchy, as well as the decisions of the First Vatican Council on papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction , led to a slow increase in conversions to the Orthodox faith . The Orthodox believers in Bohemia and Moravia subordinated their parishes to the Serbian Orthodox church hierarchy.

Most of the Orthodox believers in the territory of Czechoslovakia , which was founded in 1919, lived in Carpathian Ukraine . They were under the Diocese Mukačevo until their forcible union with the Roman Church, then they were of Serbian Orthodox dioceses in Hungary looked after. After the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Mukačevo and Prešov was brought into being.

Meanwhile, in the Czech part of the new state, a movement was formed to found a Czechoslovak national church . This split into a theologically liberal wing around Karel Farský , from which the Czechoslovak Hussite Church emerged , and a wing around Matěj Pavlík , which was oriented towards the Serbian Orthodox Church. Pavlik was ordained as Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church on September 24, 1921 under the name Gorazd . In 1931 the church, which now consisted of two eparchies, a Czech and a Ruthenian , had 145,000 believers, 120,000 of them in the Carpathian Ukraine.

Church of St. Gorazd in Olomouc

In 1942 Gorazd granted the assassins Reinhard Heydrich refuge in the crypt of the Prague Church of St. Cyril and Method . After the hiding place was discovered, Gorazd was arrested by the Gestapo , tortured and murdered on September 4, 1942 by a firing squad. The Orthodox Church was banned, its assets were confiscated by the National Socialist German Reich , and all clergymen were abducted for forced labor .

After the war the church was allowed again, but most of its believers in Carpathian Ukraine were attached to the USSR and placed under the Russian Orthodox Church . The congregations of the Prešov-Mukačevo eparchy that remained in Slovakia and the congregations in Bohemia and Moravia now also requested subordination to the Patriarchate of Moscow , which was carried out on January 14, 1946. In 1951 the Patriarchate of Moscow granted autocephaly to the then Czechoslovak Orthodox Church at their request , which was only recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople in 1998. The Czechoslovak Orthodox Church received the greatest numerical increase in the 1950s through the ban on the Greek Catholic Church and the compulsory incorporation into the Orthodox Church by the communist rulers. After the ban was lifted, most of the believers returned to the Greek Catholic Church, but some remained in the care of the Orthodox Church. After the division of Czechoslovakia, the Orthodox Church remained united.

Metropolitans

Saints and martyrs

  • In 1961, Bishop Gorazd was accepted by the Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church among the holy neo-martyrs of the 20th century. On September 6, 1987, the Czechoslovak Orthodox Church canonized him.
  • In 1994 Rastislav , a supporter of Kyrill and Methods in Moravia, was canonized.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Census in the Czech Republic 2001 ( Memento of the original from November 3, 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.czso.cz
  2. 2001 census in Slovakia ( Memento from November 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 78 kB)