Catholic World News News Feature
Uniate Church Celebrates 400th Anniversary August 19, 1996
WARSAW (CWN) - Eastern Catholics celebrated 400 years of unity with the Catholic Church on Sunday, during celebrations in the southern Polish town of Jaroslaw.
The Greek Catholic, or Uniate, Church was founded in 1596 when Orthodox bishops signed the Union of Brest, acknowledging the pope as spiritual head of the Church. Under the Union, the Orthodox bishops accepted the authority of the Pope, while retaining their Byzantine liturgy, marriage of priests, and their own hierarchy.
In the culmination of three days of ceremonies, papal envoy Cardinal Achille Silvestrini adorned with diamonds a crown on a famous icon of the Virgin Mary in a Jaroslaw church. Under Communist rule in Poland and the Soviet Union, the Uniate Church suffered persecution including a forced merger with the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
Since the fall of Communism the Uniate Church has enjoyed a revival, including within Poland where it has more than 100,000 adherents, for which Polish Archbishop Jan Martyniak gave thanks during Sunday's ceremonies. "Although the Church was underground, it has emerged and is developing in the Ukrainian lands, in the diaspora and in Poland," PAP news agency reported him as saying.
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