www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Krizevci Church?

I've tried to get information about this Byzantine Catholic Jurisdiction, but very few can be found in the internet.

I'd like to know if some of you can tell me some things, specially about their ethnic background and particularities of their Rite.

From what I've read, most of them were Serbs who joined the Russyns and some Slovaks in the same jurisdiction under a latin primate in Hungary (??), and then received their own Eastern Bishop.

What surprises me is that some books identify Krizevci with Macedonia and not with Croatia, and call them "Macedonian Byzantine Catholics".

Do they still identify themselves as "Serbs"? Montenegrins?
Do they follow the Serbian Orthodox tradition?

Is there any Serbian byzantine catholic community in the diaspora?

[ 09-14-2002: Message edited by: Remie ]

This community consists of about 50,000 souls, headed by an Eparch with jurisdiction over all of the former Yugoslavia and who is part of the Metropolia of Zagreb (Latin). Recently, the 6,000 people in 5 parishes in Macedonia also have the Latin Bishop of Skopje as their Apostolic Visitator, who has assumed much of the authority of the Eparch, given the difficutl political situation.

Ethnically, it includes ethnic Serbs (mostly in Croatia), Rusyns (1750 emigration to the Banat), Ukrainians (1900 emigration to the Banat), and Macedonians (19th century conversions).

They have no parishes in Montenegro, Kosovo or Slovenia.

Axios

[ 09-14-2002: Message edited by: Axios ]

To put some numbers on this composition:


http://home.t-online.de/home/niko.wy/kirchen/4-3-6.htm

The 1611 union proper to this region involved Serbian orthodox who under Turkish pressure fled to regions of present-day Croatia.

It's interesting to note the contrast in language at the website in Croatia:
http://www.hbk.hr/katcrkva/eng/opce/krizevci.html

djs

Macedonia is no longer a part of the Eparchy of Krizevci. On 11 January 2001, the Apostolic Exarchate of Macedonia was erected and Bishop Joakim Herbut, Latin Bishop of Skopje, was named the first Apostolic Exarch.

It should be noted that while Bishop Herbut heads a Latin diocese, he was ordained a priest for the Eparchy of Krizevci. In addition, his auxiliary for the Diocese of Skopje, Bishop Kiro Stojanov, is listed in the Annuario Pontificio 2002, page 724, as having been born in Radovo, in the Apostolic Exarchate of Macedonia.

Thank you fro the statistics!

I've always been curious about the modern Serbian byzantine catholics.

I know they suffered a lot under the Croatians and the Roman Church which actively colaborated with the nazis and the dictator Ante Pavelic.

The Latin Bishop Stepinac (recently beatified) primate of Croatia, changed the bishop of Krizevci (a Serbian Bishop) and installed a Russyn-Croatian one: Janko Simrak, who started the latinization and croatization of his faithful.
Under the Utaze regimme, 244,000 Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Serbs, were massively re-baptized in the Latin Rite, and received in the "Church of God" (Bishop Stepinac's words)

http://home.earthlink.net/~velid/cf/cs/c10.html

Glory to God for all things!

Dear friends,

I understand that Bishop Janko was martyred (August 8, 1946?) for his faith by the Tito regime. He was a good shepherd his Greek Catholic faithful during the trials of occupation and civil war. Is he, in fact, venerated as a martyr by the faithful of the Krizevci eparchy? Are there any plans to beatify him?

Presviataya Bogoroditse Fatimskaya, spasi nas.
RusOrthCath martyrs and confessors, pray for us.
Holy Martyr Janko, pray for us.

During WW II the Latin Church in Croatia and other countries deeply colaborated with the Nazis and the dictatorships.
In Croatia, radical nationalists directed by the Fuhrer, Ante Pavelic proclaimed a Catholic State with no tolerance of other religions (Catholicism was seen as the unique-identity of the Croatian nation). Jews, muslims and gypsies had to be destroyed, and the Serbs had to become Croats by being re-chrismated in the Latin Rite.
The Greek catholic Church also suffered because their Serbian identity was eliminated (and the plan was to get them latinized).

On the other side, when the communists won the war in eastern Europe, the Orthodox Church was the one which collaborated against Catholics in many countries (Romania 1948, for example).

We're all sinned against our brothers.

Remie:

I'd like to read more on the history of Krizevci, so I'd appreciate your references, and help from anyone else on this subject.

I would find it interesting to know, for example, just how much "Serbian" identity was present starting around, say 1750 - some time after the head of the Serbian Orthodox church fled to thus territory (1691), and after appreciable Rusyn immigration to this area. In his letter on the Union of Uzhorod, the Pope refers to Krizevci in the same way as Presov and Hajdorodog as offshoots of Mukachevo.

A problem, of course, is that there is typically more polemic and scant history in a lot of the information available about the Balkans on the net. The site you posted, for example, is produced by the "Clero-Fascist Studies Project", and may not be the best source for unbiased history. In any case, it is not clear from this site that Orthodox were re-baptized into the "Latin Rite" and even less clear that Greek Cathoics "were re-baptized in the Latin Rite". I am curious about the extent to which Orthodox
may have been forcibly re-baptized as Greek Catholics.

djs

Most of what ive read about the Krizevci Church is in the information site of the Orthodox Church of Argentina which is good and has the history of many jurisdictions (both Orthodox and Uniate), but it is in Spanish.

http://www.geocities.com/pro_ortodoxia/

the same reviews of the history of each Church could be found in the BRU Romanian Site:

http://www.greek-catholic.ro

I supose that their Serbian identity got blurred with the Russyn inmigration, and the inmigration of Slovak, Romanian, and Hungarian Greek Catholics. I guess that they now look like a Slavic hybrid Church and perhaps, with latinizations.
But I remember reading some articles (they were letters I think) about the situation of the Eparchy during the war, and it said more and less this: "the priests of the Eparchy, have abandoned the traditional Orthodox clerical vestments, because it could cause confusion, and they don't want to show their Serbian identity in front of the Croatians" So it seems that this Serbian identity still remained or still exists.
There's also one thing, some of the churches they have, were previosly Serbian Orthodox parishes, including a "Church of St Sava" near the city of Krizevci. The Greek Catholic cathedral's iconostas is the work of famous Croatian artists.

http://www.krizevci.net/hr/html/crkve.html
http://www.krizevci.net/hr/html/katedrala.html
http://www.krizevci.net/hr/html/grkokatolici.html
http://www.krizevci.net/hr/html/grkokatolici1.html

Unfortunately I dont speak Serbian.

http://www.krizevci.hr/kultura/gk-katedrala/

This article is about the Cathedral of Krizevci, it is very complete and good (music, cathedral, architecture, the iconostas, the icons, etc), but I don't know Serbian!
I'm sure this would be interesting to many people here. I hope you can help a little bit with a translation or an explanation

Kyr Slavomir Miklosh is the current eparch. There are about 40 or so priests according to my 2001 Ukrainian Catholic clergy directory. There is also a Basilian community in that eparchy.

Several married priests from this eparchy are serving in the Stamford eparchy. I am not sure about the ethnicity of all of the priests serving in the US although I do know Father Kiril Manolev of the Stamford eparchy is Macedonian.

Kyr Slavomir recently visited the US and met with Metropolitan Stefan Soroka to strengthen ecclesial ties. There is ongoing discussions about additional exchange of clergy between Krizhevci and the UCC in the USA, and about training more of the Krizhevci seminarians here. I think with the troubles in both Macedonia and Croatia keeping a seminary operating in that eparchy has been difficult.

Thank you for the answers.
From what I've seen, the Church of Krizhevci doesn't have the intention to restore the Serbian Orthodox tradition .
I supose that this would be different in Macedonia, where the influence of latinization hasn't been as strong as in other parts of Europe.

There was no "Greek Catholic Slovak" immigration to Vojvodina nor anywhere else in the present-day Krizevci Eparchy. The faithful of the eparchy are of Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Croatian ethnicity. The Slovaks who settled in Vojvodina were Roman Catholics.

But I guess this makes me a Slovakophobe to say this, eh Diak?

You funny, Lemko.

Would that be Slovakophobe, Slovaphobe, Slovenskophobe? I have an "adopted" baba from Mochariy, so I don't think I am a Lemkophobe.

I do agree with you regarding the Carpathian origin of many of the descendents of the Krizhevci eparchy. And the Slovaks would probably have generally amalgamated into the Croatian Roman Catholic parishes.

It is interesting that there are some who, however, have come into union from Orthodoxy, more so in the Macedonian portion of the eparchy, that were not of Carpathian (Rusyn/Ukrainian) ethnic origin.

Folks,

I don't think it's in Serbian, but rather in Croatian. Am I correct?

I get the impression that Serbian and Croatian languages are the same, but the only major differences are the alphabets. Serbian in Cyrillic and Croatian in Latin. Am I correct?

Also, naturally, I know the minor differences are the dialets. That's all?

Thanks!

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine