Chronology of Catholic Dioceses:The Bulgarian Catholic Church

See a list of abbreviations used in this list.

We ask our readers to kindly assist us in determining the nature of the jurisdiction established in 1861.

1: Historical Background

Under Ottoman rule, Bulgarian Orthodox Christians were gradually brought under the control of ethnic Greek bishops as part of a general hellenization of their ecclesial life. In 1767 they were placed directly under the jurisdiction of the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople.

In the 19th century, when a struggle to obtain ecclesiastical independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate was gaining momentum, some influential Bulgarian Orthodox in Constantinople began to consider Rome as a solution to their problem. They thought that as Catholics they would be able to retrieve their national ecclesiastical traditions which they felt Constantinople had denied them.

On 30 December, 1860, 120 deputies of the people petitioned the Apostolic Delegate to receive them into the Roman Church on condition of the recognition of their language and liturgy, and the appointment of a bishop of their own nationality. They then sent a delegation, headed by the elderly Archimandrite Joseph Sokolsky, to Rome to negotiate with the Holy See. These talks were successful: Pope Pius IX himself ordained Sokolsky a bishop in 1861 and named him Archbishop for Bulgarian Catholics of the Byzantine rite. The following June he was recognized as such by the Ottoman government.

But in June 1861, almost immediately after his return to Constasntinople, Sokolsky disappeared under very mysterious circumstances, was forced to travel to Odessa on a Russian ship, and spent the remaining 18 years of his life in the Monastery of the Caves at Kiev. The exact details of this episode have never been revealed.

Nevertheless, the Bulgarian Byzantine Catholic Church initially gained about 60,000 members. The Russian government, meanwhile, began to support attempts to establish a separate Bulgarian Orthodox Church within the Ottoman Empire. This effort bore fruit in 1870 when a Bulgarian Orthodox Exarchate was set up. This effectively put an end to the movement towards Catholicism, and before the turn of the century, three quarters of the Bulgarian Byzantine Catholics had returned to Orthodoxy.

Most of those who remained Byzantine Catholic lived in villages in Macedonia and Thrace. Therefore in 1883 the Holy See created a new ecclesiastical jurisdiction for them. Apostolic Vicariates were established in Thessalonika in Macedonia, and in Adrianople for Thrace, while an Apostolic Administrator with the title of Archbishop remained in Constantinople. But the community suffered grievously during the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and the Greek-Turkish war 1920-1922, and the few surviving members fled to the new Bulgarian kingdom for safety.

Given this new situation, Bulgarian Byzantine Catholics were reorganized in 1926: the previous ecclesiastical entities were abolished, and a new Apostolic Exarchate was established in Sofia. This Exarchate had 15 000 Catholics at the end of 1998, in 20 parishes.

-CT (based on Robertson 1995, CE, and AP 2000)

2: Jurisdictions

1861: Constantinople / Apostolic Vicariate for the united Bulgars (AV [Bulg.-Byz.]) - (Ottoman Empire) Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece
1883: Hadrianopolis / Thracia (AV [Bulg.-Byz.], detached from Constantinople [Bulg.-Byz.]) - (Ottoman Empire) Turkey, Bulgaria
1883: Thessalonika (AV [Bulg.-Byz.], detached from Constantinople [Bulg.-Byz.]) - (Ottoman Empire) Greece
1926: Constantinople / united Bulgars (AV [Bulg.-Byz.], abolished) - (Ottoman Empire) Turkey
1926: Hadrianopolis (AV [Bulg.-Byz.], abolished) - Turkey
1926: Thessalonika (AV [Bulg.-Byz.], abolished) - Greece
1926: Sofia (ApEx [Bulg.-Byz.], erected as the Bulgarian Byzantine Church was reorganized, previously probably mainly part of AV Hadrianopolis [Bulg.-Byz.]) - Bulgaria