Uniate Catholics in Belarus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cyrillic ( Belarusian )
Беларуская грэка-каталіцкая (уніяцкая) царква
Łacinka : Biełaruskaja hreka-katalickaja (unijackaja) carkva
Transl. : Belaruskaja hrėka-katalickaja (unijackaja) carkva
Transcr. : Belaruskaja hreka-katalizkaja (unijazkaja) zarkwa

The community of United Belarusian Catholics is part of the Roman Catholic Church . Like all Catholics, they are subordinate to the Pope .

The existence of the Uniate in Belarus , like the Ukrainian Catholic Church , goes back to the Ecclesiastical Union of Brest in 1595/96. In the following times, oppressed by the Russian Empire , there were hardly any Uniates in Belarus by the end of the 19th century. But until the interwar period, the Belarusian Uniates were recognized as a church sui juris (i.e. its own law). After the First World War they had around 30,000 believers in the areas belonging to Poland , in 1931 an apostolic visitor was appointed for them and in 1940 their own exarchate was set up, which, however, never functioned normally in the face of the war. However, when the eastern Polish territories came to the Soviet Union after the Second World War , the Soviet Union entered into a forced union with the Russian Orthodox Church . After the war, there were only a few Belarusian-Uniate communities in Poland and, in addition, communities of emigrants in America and Western Europe.

With the independence of the Republic of Belarus in 1991, the Uniate tradition also revived east of the Bug , and there are again some Uniate parishes with a few thousand believers. In view of the small number, however, the Holy See decided not to re-establish a separate hierarchy for the United Belarusians. Instead, they were subordinated to the Roman Catholic dioceses. In 1993 , Pope John Paul II appointed an Apostolic Visitator , Archimandrite Sergiusz Gajek , based in Lublin, Poland , to look after the Uniate . In the papal documents, the United Belarusians are referred to as a community and not as a (partial) church , because they are subordinate to the hierarchy of the Latin rite, even though special canon law for Eastern Catholics is applied in their affairs ; but one speaks of the Belarusian Greek Catholic Church . Today it includes around 8,000 believers in around 20 congregations.

There is no official church information about the worldwide number of United Belarusians. There are American diaspora communities, the centers of the European diaspora are London and Antwerp, there should be around 2000 believers here, with Alexander Nadson as a visitor in England. These communities are subject to local Roman Catholic jurisdiction.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Smaller Eastern Catholic Churches of the Byzantine Rite: Belarusian Greek Catholic Church , prooriente.at
  2. ^ A b Siarhiej Hajek: The Belarusian Greek Catholic Church Yesterday and Today . In Καθολική , July 25, 2006.
  3. ↑ → en: Alexander Nadson