interwiki, renameuser, Administrators
13,552
edits
Changes
fixed intro title, added template
The '''Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia''' presents both an ancient history as well as a very modern history. The present day Church occupies the lands, Moravia, where the brothers SS. Cyril and Methodius began their mission to the Slavs, introducing the liturgical and canonical order of the Orthodox Eastern Church, translated into the Slavic language. In doing this they developed the first slavic alphabet. This mission was destroyed after Methodius died in 885, as Pope Stephen V of Rome forced all disciples of the brothers to leave the countryside which now is the Czech Republic. The Orthodox order survived in present day Slovakia due to its nearness and influence to Kievian Russia until the union with Rome was instituted by the Viennese Court.
After the legal restrains to Orthodoxy were removed with the end of World War I, many people left the Roman Catholic Church. Many looked to the Serbian Orthodox Church as parts of it had been within the pre-war union. Among them was a Roman Catholic priest, Matthias Pavlik, who had been interested in Orthodox Christianity for years. The Church of Serbia, thus, consented to consecrate Fr. Matthias as a bishop of the Orthodox Church with the name Gorazd.
There are 82 parishes in the Czech Republic with 51 in Bohemia and 31 in Moravia and Silesia. The Orthodox Theological Faculty of the University of Presov provides an education for future priests.
{{stubchurches}}
[[Category: Jurisdictions]]
