Romanian Greek Catholic Church

Romanian Greek Catholic Church

Latin Ecclesia Graeco-Catholica Romaniae , Romanian Biserica Română Unită cu Roma, Greco-Catolică
Basic data
Jurisdiction status	Grand Archbishop Church
rite	Byzantine rite
Liturgical language	Romanian
calendar	Meletian calendar
Establishment date	1693
Seat	Grand Archbishopric of Făgăraș and Alba Iulia ( Blaj )
Hierarch	Grand Archbishop of Făgăraş and Alba Iulia Lucian Mureşan
statistics
Jurisdictions	7th
Believers	498,658
Bishops	7th
Parishes	1240
Diocesan priest	838
Religious priest	44
Permanent deacons	8th
Friars	65
Religious sisters	327
Status: 2014

The Romanian Greek Catholic Church ( Romanian Biserica Română Unită cu Roma, Greco-Catolică ) is a religious community united with the Roman Catholic Church , which recognizes the Pope as its spiritual head.

The religious community comprises around 710,000 members, mostly in Romania. The head of the Church has the rank of Grand Archbishop , who has his seat in Blaj .

Holy Trinity Cathedral in Blaj

history

Its origins go back to 1687, when the Roman-German Emperor Leopold I from the House of Habsburg incorporated the Carpathian Basin into his empire. As early as 1693 Jesuits began to evangelize among the Orthodox Christians. These have been under Calvinist influence for decades . Their efforts for the people there and above all the political denial of full civil rights for non-Catholics led to the union with the Catholic Church on September 4, 1700.

Ecclesiastically this area was first under the Latin Archbishop of Esztergom , who is also the Primate of Hungary . First Pope Pius IX. established an independent ecclesiastical province for the Romanian Greek Catholic Church in 1853 , which consisted of Făgăraş-Alba Iulia as a metropolitan diocese and three suffragan dioceses . After the end of the First World War , the area came to Romania in 1920 and in 1940 still had five dioceses with 1,500 priests and 1.5 million believers. But in 1948, after the end of the Second World War , communism established itself in Romania and the United Church came into dire straits. On October 1, 1948, under pressure from the government, six priests announced the solution of the union with Rome and on October 21 they carried out the union with the Romanian Orthodox Church . The bishops and anyone who refused to bow to this measure were imprisoned by the Romanian state. After the revolution of 1989, the United Church initiated numerous lawsuits to get back land and buildings - mostly churches - that had been expropriated by the communist state in 1948. These trials and the massive anti-Catholic propaganda by some Orthodox bishops also prevent an amicable settlement with the Romanian Orthodox Church regarding return claims.

Since 1987 there has been a diaspora diocese in Ohio, USA.

Dioceses of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church

After the fall of communism, it became clear that the Romanian uniate church still largely functioned underground and had also ordained bishops. On March 14, 1990 , Pope John Paul II was able to restore the hierarchy of the United Church and reoccupy its five dioceses. Since 1994 the Romanian Greek Catholic Church has been led by Lucian Mureșan , Archbishop of Alba Iulia and Făgăraș. He was on December 16, 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI. elevated to the position of first major archbishop of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church.

The relationship to Orthodoxy has relaxed noticeably after the Pope's visit in 1999 and the formation of an ecumenical dialogue commission, but some questions about the return of goods still have to be resolved.

structure

Dioceses

The Romanian Greek Catholic Church has the following dioceses :

Surname	Seat	Reference year	Believers	World priest	Religious priest	Total priests	Believers per priest	Deacons	Religious men	Religious women	Parishes
Grand Archbishopric of Făgăraș and Alba Iulia	Blaj	2016	202000	192	3	195	1035		5	168	189
Cluj-Gherla Eparchy	Cluj-Napoca	2016	47956	157	13	170	282		20th	71	163
Lugoj Eparchy	Lugoj	2016	99000	124	4th	128	773		6th	4th	149
Maramureș Eparchy	Baia Mare	2016	52502	144	6th	150	350		8th	43	167
Oradea Mare Eparchy	Oradea	2016	81000	178	13	191	424		16	17th	152
Eparchy of Saint Basil the Great	Bucharest
Eparchie Saint George's in Canton ( exemt )	Canton (Ohio) , USA	2016	6200	25th	3	28	221		6th	4th	16
total		2016	488658	820	42	862	567		61	307	836

Uniform information from the entry on Romanian Greek Catholic Church on catholic-hierarchy.org . Newer figures are partly available.

Other diaspora communities

• Austria: The Romanian believers in Austria belong to the Greek Catholic rite , one of the three rites of the Catholic Church in Austria as a legally recognized church . They are looked after by the Ordinariate for the Byzantine Believers in Austria , which is subordinate to the Archbishop of Vienna , and the Greek Catholic Central Parish of St. Barbara . There are two parishes, in Vienna and in Graz .

statistics

The proportion of Greek Catholics in Romania (2002 census)

After the fall of the Wall, the religious community had around 1,391,000 members, of which only 228,377 lived in Romania in 1992. According to the Annuario Pontificio 2005, valid for the end of 2003, the church has 737,900 believers, 716 diocesan priests and 347 seminarians. According to official figures from 2002 by the National Statistics Institute of Romania, the Church in Romania has only 195,481 believers. For the 2010s the number is given as 710,000, 6,000 of them in the USA.

See also

• Rite church
• List of Roman Catholic Dioceses
• List of Major Archbishops of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church
• List of the bishops of Oradea
• Eastern Catholic Churches
• Roman Catholic Church in Romania

literature

• Homepage of the Eparchy of Saint George's in Canton
• Ernst Christoph Suttner: The Transylvanian Church Union at the turn of the 18th century . (PDF) istorie.uab.ro
• Eastern Church Institute Regensburg: Documents of the Transylvanian Church Union (PDF) translated by Klaus and Michaela Zelzer with explanations by Ernst Christoph Suttner

Web links

• Homepage of the Romanian Catholic Church
• The Romanian Greek Catholic Church in Madrid, Spain (web)
• The Romanian Greek Catholic Church in Madrid, Spain (blog)
• Nicodemus C. Schnabel OSB: Romanian Greek Catholic Church .
• Entry on Romanian Greek Catholic Church on gcatholic.org (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Eastern Catholic Churches 2017. (PDF) Catholic Near East Welfare Association, accessed October 3, 2018 . 
2. ^ ^{A b} Johannes Oeldemann: Romanian Greek-Catholic Church . In: Wolfgang Thönissen (Hrsg.): Lexicon of ecumenism and denominational studies . On behalf of the Johann Adam Möhler Institute for Ecumenism . Herder publishing house . Freiburg im Breisgau 2007, ISBN 978-3-451-29500-3 . Pp. 1183-1184.
3. ^ Archdiocese of Făgăraş şi Alba Iulia (Romanian) ( English ) Catholic Hierarchy. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
4. ^ Diocese of Cluj-Gherla (Romanian) ( English ) Catholic Hierarchy. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
5. ^ Diocese of Lugoj (Romanian) ( English ) Catholic Hierarchy. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
6. ^ Diocese of Maramureş (Romanian) ( English ) Catholic Hierarchy. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
7. ^ Diocese of Oradea Mare {Gran Varadino} (Romanian) ( English ) Catholic Hierarchy. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
8. ↑ Eparchy of Sfântul Vasile cel Mare de Bucureşti (Romanian) ( English ) Catholic Hierarchy. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
9. ↑ Eparchy of Saint George's in Canton (Romanian) ( English ) Catholic Hierarchy. Retrieved June 4, 2014.
10. ↑ Romanian Uniate Church - Greek Catholic, Vienna (ruk-wien.at) ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2010 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. 
11. ↑ Population census in Romania 2002 ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ^ Romanian Greek Catholic Church . prooriente.at; Retrieved July 4, 2014.

Coordinates: 46 ° 10 ′ 24.6 ″  N , 23 ° 55 ′ 15 ″  E