The traditional name for Eastern or Byzantine rite churches in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
The largest church within the Uniate Church is Ukrainian Catholic Church, which emerged as a result of the church union of Berestia (Brest-Litovsk) in 1596. Of the Soviet successor states, smaller pockets of Byzantine-rite Catholics also exist in Belarus. Although the historic term "Uniates" is still widely used in Russia, Ukrainian Catholics in the early twenty-first century considered it imprecise and pejorative.
By the end of the sixteenth century, a crisis within the Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, combined with pressure from Polish authorities, prompted some Orthodox bishops to advocate union with Rome. Part of their motivation was to ensure the equal treatment of Orthodox believers and clergy in the Catholic Commonwealth. Having received assurances that the Byzantine liturgy, rites, and entitlement of priests to marry would be respected, in 1595 four Orthodox bishops and the metropolitan of Kiev agreed to recognize the pope's supreme authority in matters of faith and dogma. Following the approval of Pope Clement VIII, the union was proclaimed in October 1596 at a synod in Berestia.
Opposition from other bishops within the Kiev metropoly and the Orthodox nobility sparked a fierce religious polemic. The Ukrainian Cossacks proved themselves to be staunch opponents of the union. During the Cossack-Polish wars of 1648 - 1657, the Cossacks often massacred Uniates en masse. The Cossack state under Bohdan Khmelnytsky dissolved the Uniate Church, but it continued to exist in Poland. The partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century split the Uniate church between the Russian and Austrian empires. Russian tsars encouraged the conversion of Uniates to Orthodoxy until 1839, when Nicholas I declared the Union of Berestia null and void, thus forcing all Uniates into the fold of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In contrast, the Uniate Church in Austria was granted equal status with the Roman Catholic Church. In 1807 Pope Pius VII created the Uniate metropoly of Halych with its see in Lviv, the capital of Galicia. Austrian rulers established educational institutions and provided support for the clergy of what they renamed the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church. During the nineteenth century it became the national church of Galicia's Ukrainians, culminating in the long tenure of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky (1900 - 1944), who achieved the stature of a national symbol. In 1939 the church had some 5.5 million faithful.
In April 1945, with Western Ukraine under Soviet control, Stalin ordered the entire Ukrainian Catholic hierarchy imprisoned. In March 1946 the authorities convened in Lviv a spurious sobor (church council), which reunited the Uniates with the Orthodox Church. However, the Uniate Church continued to exist underground, as well as in the Ukrainian diaspora. A mass movement to restore the Ukrainian Catholic Church began during the glasnost period and culminated in the church's legalization in December 1989. It quickly regained its position as a dominant church in Western Ukraine. As of 2003, the Ukrainian Catholic Church had 3,317 parishes in Ukraine and was headed by Major Archbishop Lubomyr Cardinal Husar.
Bibliography
Bociurkiw, Bohdan R. (1996). The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Soviet State, 1939 - 1950. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press.
Halecki, Oskar. (1958). From Florence to Brest (1439 - 1596). New York: Fordham University Press.
Himka, John-Paul. (1999). Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine: The Greek Catholic Church and Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867 - 1900. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
—SERHY YEKELCHYK
