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Church in Ukraine |
The Catholic Churches of Ukraine NEW SITE: Up-to-date information is now maintained at the Religious Information Service of Ukraine website at www.risu.org.ua.
The different Catholic Churches of Ukraine share full communion with the Pope of Rome and with each other. Their historical backgrounds, however, and theological and liturgical traditions are significantly different. These Catholic Churches are Churches sui juris, they are in full and visible communion with the Roman Apostolic See, but they have separate eparchial (diocesan) structures, liturgical life, canonical order, historical and cultural particularities and so on. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Catholics of the Byzantine rite, known as Greek Catholics, are heirs of the Union of Brest of 1596, which the hierarchy of the Kyivan Metropolia established with the Church of Rome. They belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC). The Twentieth century was a stormy one for this Church, and she was led through it by some of her greatest leaders. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was liquidated by Stalin's regime and forcibly "re-united" with the Russian Orthodox Church after World War Two. Regardless of the fact that it was officially forbidden and harshly persecuted, this Church preserved its hierarchical structures in the underground and diaspora, and in December 1989 it requested official legalization. In spring of 1991 the late His Beatitude Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Lubachivskyi, the head of the Church at that time, returned from emigration to his see in Lviv. With 3317, the UGCC now has the second largest number of religious communities of the Churches in Ukraine. Major Archibishop His Beatitude Lubomyr Cardinal Husar is the present head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic Church Catholics of the Latin rite are members of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) in Ukraine, whose hierarchical structures in the past were spread over those Ukrainian lands which became incorporated into neighboring Catholic nations. After these territories were joined to the USSR, the Soviet power liquidated the diocesan network of the Roman Catholics, deporting and repressing a significant portion of its clergy and faithful. Only about one hundred parishes remained under the severe government control. Since Ukrainian independence many parishes have re-opened and new parishes have been formed. His Eminence Marian Cardianal Javorski, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Lviv, is the primate of Roman Catholics in Ukraine.
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© The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, 2001 Research by the - Lviv Theological Academy All rights reserved. |