Letter of Rusyn Greek Catholics of Uzhhorod, Zakarpatska Oblast of Ukraine to Pope Benedict XVI
(14 June 2007)
(RIMC note: This is a corrected version of the English language of the original letter. For the original document in PDF format, click here.)
His Holiness Pope Benedict, VATICAN CITY STATE
Rome ITALY
June 14, 2007
Dr. Yuri A. Dumnich
Svoboda Avenue, 53, Apt. 45
Uzhhorod 88000 UKRAINE
Your Holiness Pope Benedict,
We are Uniates from Ruthenia, Uzhhorod (now Transcarpathian region or Zakarpatska oblast of Ukraine).
We are sending our prayer to the Lord asking His blessing upon you for many years.
The Rusyns, Ruthenians or Rusnaks are the dominant (by number) people in our region. As we are Rusyns, for centuries the Church Slavonic language was the language of all our church services. Here we preserved our language in the church since the year 863. The union of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Uzhhorod in 1646 declared the free use of the Church Slavonic language for all kinds of services.
Bishop Milan Šašik, the young Greek Catholic (Uniate) bishop, Slovak by nationality, was assigned by the Vatican to head the Mukachevo Eparchy in 2002. Unfortunately, he has abolished the use of the Church Slavonic language in all our church services and introduced Ukrainian instead, which is unusual for us to use in services. Many of our people were opposed to his decision. They began to attend church services with the Orthodox.
This policy was implemented at the end of the 20th century in Slovakia by Bishop Hirka. He changed the Church Slavonic language to Slovak in all our church services in the former Czechoslovakia. This resulted in a decrease in the number of Rusyns in Slovakia from about 200,000 in 1920 to about 60,000 in 2002.
A similar result could be expected now in Podkarpats'ka Rus' (now the Zakarpatska oblast of Ukraine).
Ukrainians migrated to our region mainly after 1944, when part of Ruthenia was captured by the Soviet Union. Already for a long time here the small Ukrainian community has their own services in Ukrainian. There is no need to introduce Ukrainian for all our services. We do not want to change our traditional liturgical language.
Could we possibly ask Your Holiness to help us with your just decision concerning the language in our eparchy?
We will pray for health of Your Holiness. We will pray for the Lord to bless and preserve Your Holiness at the altar of Saint Peter for many years.
On behalf of our parish,
Yuri A. Dumnich, PhD, MD.
Return to the 2007 News Archive index
