Polish Orthodox Church

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The Polish Orthodox Church (officially Polski Autokefaliczny Kościół Prawosławny , literally Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church ) is an Orthodox church . Today it has around 600,000 to 800,000 members, most of them Poles , Ukrainians or Belarusians , especially in the Białystok area .

It is divided into seven eparchies . Its head is the Metropolitan of Warsaw and all of Poland . The Polish Orthodox Church is the second largest church in Poland.

history

Until the three Polish partitions in the 18th century, Poland was divided religiously. The south and west of the country were dominated by Catholicism, while the north and east had a stronger Orthodox element. After the Polish partitions, the Catholic territories essentially came to Prussia and Austria , while the Orthodox part of the country fell to Russia . With that, the Polish Orthodox came under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarch .

After the First World War , four million Orthodox were a minority in the again independent Polish state. Since the Polish government advised them to part with Moscow, a synod was convened in Warsaw in 1922 to declare autocephaly . Although the Ecumenical Patriarch Constantine VI. Confirmed this in 1924, the Moscow Patriarchate viewed this as interference in its affairs and refused to recognize the independence of the Polish Church.

Inner church and interdenominational conflicts shaped the life of the Polish Orthodox Church during the interwar period . Within the Church there was a marked contrast between the bishops, who were almost all Russian, and the believers, two-thirds of whom were Ukrainians. The bishops refused to appoint Ukrainian bishops and prohibited the use of Ukrainian in the liturgy. Outwardly there were conflicts with the state-backed Catholic Church, which was accused of trying to force Orthodox priests to preach in Polish , forcibly closing and destroying churches and forcing Orthodox Christians to convert .

As in World War II, the eastern part of Poland occupied by the Soviet Union was the most recent members came to the Polish Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate, while the small portion back to the church in the German-occupied Poland remained independent.

The population shifts after the Second World War also influenced the structure of the Polish Orthodox Church: As part of the so-called Operation Vistula , some of the Ukrainians - often Orthodox - who previously lived in what is now eastern Poland, were moved to the regions annexed to Poland in the west and north (southern East Prussia , Western Pomerania , Silesia ) were forcibly resettled, where new communities were formed. Another part of the Ukrainians was forcibly resettled in the Ukrainian SSR , to which part of the former Eastern Poland was also affiliated, where the Orthodox communities from then on belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate.

In 1948, in the Communist People's Republic of Poland , the Metropolitan of Warsaw Dionizy was deposed because of his anti-communist attitude. In the same year, at the request of the Warsaw Synod, the Moscow Patriarchate declared the autocephaly granted by the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1924 null and void and published its own autocephaly statute for the Polish Church. Even so, the office of Metropolitan remained vacant until 1951, when the Moscow Patriarchate appointed the Archbishop of Lviv in Ukraine to this position.

Church organization

The Polish Orthodox Church is part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople . It is divided into seven eparchies, another eparchy is for the military chaplaincy. In addition to the eight bishops presided over by the “Metropolitan for Warsaw and all of Poland”, around 400 priests serve in 220 parishes. It also includes several foreign parishes and parishes in Portugal , Spain , Brazil and Italy .

There are five male monasteries ( Monastery of the Annunciation in Supraśl ) and three female monasteries with around a hundred monks and nuns.

To train the next generation of priests, it finances a chair at the University of Białystok and at the Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw . It also has its own seminary in Warsaw, an icon painting school in Bielsk Podlaski and a church music school in Hajnówka .

Ecumenical connections

The Polish Orthodox Church is an active part of the ecumenical movement . She is a member of the World Council of Churches , the Conference of European Churches and the Polish Council of Churches. Contact with other denominations is maintained in various theological commissions .

For many years the Polish Orthodox Church has maintained a declared partnership with the Evangelical Church in Central Germany (formerly the Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony ). As part of this partnership, there are annual thematic meetings at the church leadership level. In addition, there are a number of partnership projects and intensive cooperation in the diaconal field. Community partnerships have not yet emerged, but are being sought.

literature

See also

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