THE
P RTAL
July 2016
Page 6
In Union with Rome
The Revd Mark Woodruff continues his exploration
of those Churches in Union with Rome
B
eginning our survey of the Church’s different constituent Churches, each with its own rite,
governance, theological tradition and rites, we charted how the Rus’ people around Kiev in modernday Ukraine and Belarus were evangelised from Constantinople, the capital of the Christian Roman Empire
across the Black Sea, in the 800s and 900s. This was long before the so-called Great Schism between Rome
and Constantinople in 1054 that spun the Church into separate western and eastern polarities. So, in the
corporate memory of the Byzantine-rite Slavic Church of Kiev, unity between Latin Rome and Greek
Constantinople was foundational, even despite later schisms and the shift of political control to a firmly
Orthodox new power – Moscow.
The union of Brest in 1595-6 saw the extensive
Kievan Church - cut off from Constantinople under
Ottoman rule, and pressured by the new Russian states
to the East, not to mention the missions of Calvinists
and Lutherans – seeking its continued life and identity
as “Orthodox in union with Rome” once more.
Today, despite the relentless history of Russian state
suppression in subsequent centuries, around 5 million
belong to the resurgent Church in Ukraine, Belarus
and Poland, as well as in the Americas, Australia and
Western Europe. In Belarus, there are about 5,000 in
20 parishes that emerged in the aftermath of the USSR.
Interestingly, a major cultural centre for the Christian
Belarusian nation is in north London, where a new
wooden Greek-Catholic church in Belarusian style is
being built.
century the Bulgarian Orthodox Church came into
union with Rome, mainly so that Tsar Kaloyan could
assert the independence of his Empire and Church
from Constantinople. It lasted thirty-two years, when
recognition from Constantinople was achieved.
By the nineteenth century, with much of the
Balkans long under Ottoman rule, several Bulgarian
movements in modern-day Greece, Macedonia and
Turkey looked to Rome to become the protector
of a separate non-Greek Christian and ethnic
identity within the Empire. So Pius IX established a
Bulgarian Catholic Church from 1861. Bulgarians
were ethnically cleansed from Turkey after the fall
of the Ottomans following the First World War; they
were also hounded out of Greece, and Serbian-ruled
Macedonia, rendering Pius IX’s structure irrelevant.
But what happened in other parts of Constantinople’s It had also been divisive. As the Bulgarian Orthodox
Christen