Question: When I grew up in the 1950s, we learned there were six Eastern Catholic Churches in union with the Roman Catholic Church. Now there are 23. Where did these churches come from? Were they Roman Catholic or unknown before they united? How do they go about uniting with the Roman Catholic Church? I know they have to accept the primacy of the pope, but what else makes them united?
— Marilou Schindler, Virginia
Answer: Yes, here are the 23:
- Albanian Greek Catholic Church
- Armenian Catholic Church
- Belarusian Greek Catholic Church
- Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church
- Chaldean Catholic Church
- Coptic Catholic Church
- Eritrean Catholic Church
- Ethiopian Catholic Church
- Greek Byzantine Catholic Church
- Greek Catholic Church of Croatia and Serbia
- Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
- Italo-Albanian Catholic Church
- Macedonian Greek Catholic Church
- Maronite Catholic Church
- Melkite Greek Catholic Church
- Romanian Greek Catholic Church
- Russian Greek Catholic Church
- Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church
- Slovak Greek Catholic Church
- Syriac Catholic Church
- Syro-Malabar Catholic Church
- Syro-Malankara Catholic Church
- Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
There were certainly more of them than six in the 1950s. All but one of them were established in the centuries before 1900. All these churches, except the Maronite Church, were once part of the Eastern Orthodox Churches that went into schism, no longer recognizing the pope’s authority. For reasons too various to detail here, small groups within these Orthodox churches sought reunion with the Roman Catholic Church over the centuries. They retain their splendid Eastern liturgies, quite more elaborate than the Roman Rite but are fully united with the pope and the Roman Catholic Church. Of the 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide, nearly 20 million are members of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The Syro-Malabar Church is the largest, followed by the Ukrainian Greek Church. And while small in number, overall, they bring rich and varied liturgical traditions along with cultural richness. This helps show that the Catholic Church is both ancient and new and that we are in every land and speak every language as Christ commanded: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19).
