Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh: Encyclopedia - Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh

Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh

The Byzantine Catholic Metropolia of Pittsburgh is a Byzantine Rite autonomous jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church, originally serving members of the Ruthenian Catholic Church and their decendants in the United States. The Metropolia itself is composed of the Archeparchy of Pittsburgh (60,200 faithful, 84 parishes, 83 priests) and the Eparchies of Parma (12,401 faithful, 37 parishes, 38 priests), Passaic (24,031 faithful, 89 parishes, 84 priests) and Van Nuys (2,849 faithful, 19 parishes, 25 priests). Although the Ruthenians remain the majority of the members of the Metropolia, the eparchies have ordinary jurisdiction over parishes of other Byzantine Rite traditions that do not have an established hierarchy in the United States, including the Italo-Albanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Croatians.

When the original center of the Ruthenian Catholic Church was under atheistic Communist rule and unable because of persecution to organize publicly, the impossibility of regular communication with it meant that the distant United States Metropolia, unable to be treated as a normal metropolia of an Eastern Rite Catholic Church (canons 133-139 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches), has been treated as a sui iuris (autonomous) Metropolitan Church (canons 155-173 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches). The Holy See's Annuario Pontificio has, however, always listed it not as a separate particular Church but as a Metropolia of the Ruthenian Church. If conditions continue to improve in the Ruthenian homeland, it is possible that the whole Ruthenian Church may be reorganized, perhaps as a Major Archiepiscopal Church, a rank long held by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and extended more recently, first to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and then, in 2005, to the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and to the Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic.

The Archeparchy of Pittsburgh was originally established, in 1924, as the Apostolic Exarchate for the Byzantine-Rite Faithful of Podocarpathia, becoming the Eparchy of Pittsburgh of the Ruthenians in 1963, the Metropolitan See of Munhall of the Ruthenians in 1969, and changing its name to Pittsburgh of the Byzantines in 1977. The dates of foundation of the suffragan sees are: Passaic 1963, Parma 1969, Van Nuys 1981.

The statistical information given above has been taken from the 2005 edition of the Annuario Pontificio.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki