Latin Church in Ukraine (LCiU) (; ), also officially Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine (RCCiU) (; ) is the Latin Church of the Catholic Church in Ukraine. The Latin Church is one of four sui iuris Catholic churches in Ukraine, the others being the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, and the Armenian Catholic Church, all in full communion with each other and the Pope. The Latin Church presence performs its liturgies according to the Latin liturgical rites.
It has been present on Ukrainian lands since the 10th century, since the times of Kievan Rus'. During the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 14th - 18th centuries she was one of the leaders of Western European culture and science in Ukraine. During the Russian Empire and in the Soviet era, it was persecuted and worked underground. After Ukraine gained independence in 1991, it resumed its official activities. As of 2021, there are 19 dioceses, 1134 parishes, 3 higher theological seminaries, 12 bishops and about 700 priests, half of whom are foreigners. The number of believers is about 1.5 million people. Since 2008 it has been headed by Lviv Archbishop-Metropolitan Mechyslav Mokshytskyi. It is governed by a conference of bishops. Information Office - Catholic Media Center. The largest pilgrimage center is Berdychiv Carmelite Monastery. The main educational institution for the laity is the Thomas Aquinas Institute in Kyiv.
History
The spread of Christianity in Ukraine is associated with the legend of St. Andrew the Apostle. The first historical Christian communities in the Ukrainian Crimea were founded at the end of the 1st century by Pope Clement I, who was in exile there. In the third and fourth centuries, there was a Gothic bishopric in the south of Ukraine, whose representatives took part in the First Council of Nicaea.
One of the first Christian princes in the Ukrainian lands is considered to be Prince Askold of Kiev, who was baptized in 867. On the grave of Askold was built the church of St. Nicholas, which may indicate that the Christian name of Askold was Nicholas. There is reason to believe that the prince received his name in honor of Pope Nicholas I, who pursued an active policy in the baptism of the Slavs and blessed the translations of the Bible made by Cyril and Methodius in the Slavic languages.
By the middle of the 10th century, during the reign of Prince Igor, the Christian community had grown and churches were being built. In 954–955, Slavic missionaries christened Igor's widow, Grand Princess Olga. She sent ambassadors to the German Emperor Otto I with a request to send bishops and presbyters to Rus. In 960 he was appointed Bishop of Rus Libutius of the Mogunt Monastery of St. Albania. He died in 961, and in the same year a German-Latin mission led by Bishop St. Adalbert of the Trier Monastery arrived in Kiev. Olga's grandson, Prince Yaropolk, sent ambassadors to Otto II in 974, and in 977 sent ambassadors to the Pope, and Pope Benedict VII sent his ambassadors to Yaropolk. This was the first embassy from Rome to Rus. A Latin diocese was founded in Kiev, headed by Bishop St. Boniface, which lasted until 979.
Baptism of Kievan Rus
In 988, Prince Vladimir baptized Rus. Although in Vladimir's time the Kiev metropolitanate was a subsidiary church of the Constantinople Patriarchate, the Church in Rus nevertheless became part of the Ecumenical Church. This is evidenced by the embassies from Rome, which brought the relics of Saints Clement and Titus to Korsun to Prince Vladimir in 988. After his baptism, in 991 - a new embassy from Pope John XV, in 1000 - the ambassadors of Pope Sylvester II brought relics Catholic Saints Vitus, Apollinarius, Benedict, and others. for churches that were built en masse in Rus.
Christianity strengthened the power of the prince, turned Rus into a powerful European state. In addition to ecclesiastical and political ties with the Holy See and the West, there were also dynastic ones, founded by Vladimir and inherited by his successors, including Yaroslav the Wise, whose four daughters married Christian kings of Norway, Hungary, France and Germany. From the tenth to the thirteenth century. Rus recognized the primacy of the Roman See, and the Russian episcopate, even after the so-called Great Schism of Patriarch Cerularius and the division of the churches in 1054, did not adopt any decree on separation from the Ecumenical Church.