Eastern Catholic Churches - List of Churches

List of Churches

The Holy See's Annuario Pontificio gives the following list of Eastern Catholic Churches with the principal see of each and the countries (or larger political areas) where they have ecclesiastical jurisdiction, to which are here added the date of union or foundation in parenthesis and the membership in brackets. The total membership is about 16,336,000. (EWTN gives the same list, except that it does not place the liturgical traditions in the alphabetical order in which they are given by both the Annuario Pontificio and

1. Alexandrian liturgical tradition:
   1. Coptic Catholic Church (patriarchate): Cairo, Egypt (1741)
   2. Ethiopian Catholic Church (metropolia): Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Eritrea (1846)
2. Antiochian or West Syrian liturgical tradition:
   1. Maronite Church (patriarchate): Bkerke, Lebanon, Cyprus, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Syria, Argentina, Brazil, United States, Australia, Canada, Mexico (Never separated: union re-affirmed 1182)
   2. Syriac Catholic Church (patriarchate): Beirut,, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, United States and Canada, Venezuela (1781)
   3. Syro-Malankara Catholic Church (major archepiscopate): Trivandrum, India, United States (1930)
3. Armenian liturgical tradition:
   1. Armenian Catholic Church (patriarchate): Beirut, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Palestinian Authority, Ukraine, France, Greece, Latin America, Argentina, Romania, United States, Canada, Eastern Europe (1742)
4. Chaldean or East Syrian liturgical tradition:
   1. Chaldean Catholic Church (patriarchate): Baghdad, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, United States (1692)
   2. Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (major archepiscopate): Ernakulam, India, Middle East, Europe, America
5. Constantinopolitan (Byzantine) liturgical tradition:
   1. Albanian Catholic Church (apostolic administration):, Albania (1628)
   2. Belarusian Catholic Church (no established hierarchy at present):, Belarus (1596)
   3. Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church (apostolic exarchate): Sofia, Bulgaria (1861)
   4. Byzantine Church of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro (an eparchy and an apostolic exarchate): Križevci, Ruski Krstur +, Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro (1611)
   5. Greek Byzantine Catholic Church (two apostolic exarchates): Athens, Greece, Turkey (1829)
   6. Hungarian Greek Catholic Church (an eparchy and an apostolic exarchate): Nyiregyháza, Hungary (1646)
   7. Italo-Albanian Catholic Church (two eparchies and a territorial abbacy):, Italy (Never separated)
   8. Macedonian Catholic Church (an apostolic exarchate): Skopje, Republic of Macedonia (2008)
   9. Melkite Greek Catholic Church (patriarchate): Damascus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Brazil, United States, Canada, Mexico, Iraq, Egypt and Sudan, Kuwait, Australia, Venezuela, Argentina (1726)
   10. Romanian Church United with Rome (major archiepiscopate): Blaj, Romania, United States (1697)
   11. Russian Catholic Church (two apostolic exarchates, at present with no published hierarchs): Russia, China (1905); currently about 20 parishes and communities scattered around the world, including five in Russia itself, answering to bishops of other jurisdictions
   12. Ruthenian Catholic Church (a sui juris metropolia, an eparchy, and an apostolic exarchate ): Uzhhorod, Pittsburgh, United States, Ukraine, Czech Republic (1646)
   13. Slovak Catholic Church (metropolia and an eparchy): Prešov, Slovakia, Canada (1646)
   14. Ukrainian Catholic Church (major archiepiscopate): Kiev, Ukraine, Poland, United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Germany and Scandinavia, France, Brazil, Argentina (1595)

Note: Georgian Byzantine-Rite Catholics are not recognized as a particular Church (cf. canon 27 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches). The majority of Eastern Catholic Christians in the Georgian Republic worship under the form of the Armenian liturgical rite.

The list shows that an individual autonomous particular Church may have distinct jurisdictions (local particular Churches) in several countries.

The Ruthenian Catholic Church is organized in an exceptional way because of a constituent metropolia: the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh is also, unofficially, referred to as the Byzantine Catholic Church in America. Canon law treats it as if it held the rank of an autonomous ("sui iuris") metropolitan particular Church because of the circumstances surrounding its 1969 establishment as an ecclesiastical province. At that time, conditions in the Rusyn homeland, known as Carpatho-Rus, admitted no other solution because the Byzantine Catholic Church had been forcibly suppressed by the Soviet authorities. When Communist rule ended, the Eparchy of Mukacheve (founded in 1771) re-emerged. It has some 320,000 adherents, greater than the number in the Pittsburgh metropolia. In addition, an apostolic exarchate established in 1996 for Catholics of Byzantine rite in the Czech Republic is classed as another part of the Ruthenian Catholic Church.

On the EWTN website the Apostolic Exarchate for Byzantine-rite Catholics in the Czech Republic is mentioned in a list of Eastern Churches, of which all the rest are autonomous particular Churches. This is a mistake, since recognition within the Catholic Church of the autonomous status of a particular Church can only be granted by the Holy See (cf. canon 27 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches), which instead classifies this Church as one of the constituent local particular Churches of the autonomous (sui iuris) Ruthenian Catholic Church.