Martyrs behind the Iron Curtain” “

The faith and suffering of the Catholic Churches of Eastern Europe are recounted in a book containing the proceedings of the Conference of contemporary ecclesiastical history held in the Vatican in October 1998. The book, with the title “Faith and Martyrdom. The Catholic Oriental Churches in Twentieth Century Europe” (Libreria Editrice Vaticana), was presented in the Press Room of the Holy See on 23 March. It is a “martyrology”, said Cardinal IGNACE MOUSSA I DAOUD , Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, which promoted the meeting in 1998, that intends to put an end “to the silence of death with which attempts were made to suffocate these Churches, still weak in their institutions but vigorous and fervent in faith”, in the century that has just ended. According to Cardinal ACHILLE SILVESTRINI , Prefect of the same Congregation at the time of the conference, “the re-won religious freedom in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe imposes a difficult process both of fidelity to their own traditions and of pastoral renewal”. “Knowledge of history” can however lead “to an act of discernment as objective and liberating as possible for the present and future of these Churches. After some introductory remarks, we present, by way of example, the events of some Greek Catholic Churches in Eastern Europe as described in the book. THE MARTYRDOM OF THE CHURCHES. “The second half of the twentieth century was tragic for the Oriental Catholic Churches” because “the Communist regimes decided almost everywhere to eradicate them”, explains ROBERTO MOROZZO DELLA ROCCA of S.Egidio community . “Outlawed”, “their episcopates physically eliminated, their clergy imprisoned, dispersed or forcibly annexed to the Orthodox Churches, the Catholic communities of Eastern Europe, if they were not suppressed by violence, were deprived of material resources” and “forced to go underground”. UKRAINE. The Greek Catholic Church, suppressed between 1946 and 1950, had to endure two particular types of suffering: the one that Catholics had to suffer due to their own identity and the other unleashed by the Church’s solidarity with the people. Emblematic are the figures of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptyskyi (1901-1944), precursor of ecumenism and passionate seeker of Christian unity, and Father Mykola Markevych (1907-1994) who, in spite of threats and persecutions, continued courageously to exercise his own ministry. BELARUS. Legacy of the Union of Brest (1596), aimed at re-establishing unity between the metropolitan Church of Kiev and the Church of Rome, the Belorussian Greek-Catholic Church was suppressed by Tsar Nicholas I in 1839. This was but the first in a long series of persecutions, in spite of which the Church managed to survive. Since 1939, during the Soviet occupation, the parishes that had in the meantime been re-born, ceased to exist and the faithful were dispersed. It was not until 1990 that the first Greek-Catholic parish was registered; others have followed. GREECE. By his brief “Auctus in aliqua” Pope Pius IX established an ordinariate (now an exarchate) for the Greeks of the whole territory of the apostolic delegation of Turkey in 1911. The Catholic Church, however, always had to suffer the opposition of the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities of Greece and, sometimes, even of the government. ALBANIA. The sufferings that the Catholic Church in Albania had to endure included the invasion of the Turks in the 16th century and the persecution of the Communist regime from 1944 to 1991, during which Catholic and Orthodox bishops, priests and laity were barbarously tortured and killed, monasteries and churches destroyed. ROMANIA. The persecution of the Romanian Church united with Rome began in 1948, with the arrest and deportation of several bishops. Not until 1989 was the decree of suppression rescinded. The united Romanian Church survived martyrdom, but the Romanians still bear the burden today of being divided into two Churches. BULGARIA. After the Second World War and the rise to power of the Communist regime, religion was repressed and Muslims, Protestants and Catholics were harshly persecuted and in large part killed. Three members of religious orders shot by the regime were beatified by John Paul II in 2002. Only in the 1990s did the Catholic Church acquire a legal status. ARMENIA. The genocide perpetrated between 1915 and 1916 (out of a population of 2.5 million one million Armenians were exterminated) was the first, but not the last, of the new century, an authentic collective Christian martyrdom: only those who accepted to embrace Islam could save themselves.