From Gherla to Rome: The Greek Catholic Diocese of Gherla in the ad limina Reports of Bishop Iuliu Hossu
From Gherla to Rome: The Greek Catholic Diocese of Gherla in the ad limina Reports of Bishop Iuliu Hossu

Summary/Abstract: The relations of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church of Transylvania with the Holy See in the twentieth century is a rewarding research topic but, at the same time, one insufficiently studied in historiography. Researching it means to draw on a rich archival documentation that is still little published and analyzed. A special category of primary sources, most of which have remained unpublished to this day, are the ad limina reports that bishops had to submit to the Holy See every five years. The data and information in these reports provided Rome with a periodical overview of the financial, institutional, and moral situation of a Church or one of its particular sections. The present study is meant to be a preliminary analysis for a much broader research project dedicated to the ad limina reports on the Greek Catholic Diocese of Gherla, which Bishop Iuliu Hossu submitted to the Holy See during his years in office. Their discovery in the Archives of the Congregation for Oriental Churches (in Rome) has led to this first historical analysis, which opens the way to understanding and interpreting their historical, quantitative, and qualitative potential. Despite their repetitive, subjective, and bureaucratic nature, Bishop Iuliu Hossu’s ad limina reports are valuable in that they complete, nuance, and deepen not only the history of the Greek Catholic Diocese of Gherla in the interwar decades but also that of Romania and especially Transylvania in the first decades of the twentieth century.

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