DESPRE DREPTURILE ŞI ÎNDATORIRILE MITROPOLIŢILOR DIN BISERICA ROMÂNĂ UNITĂ ÎN A DOUA JUMĂTATE A SECOLULUI AL XIX-LEA
ON RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF THE ROMANIAN GREEK-CATHOLIC CHURCH’S METROPOLITANS IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: On rights and duties of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church’s metropolitans in the second half of the 19th century. The establishment, for the Romanian Greek-Catholics, of the metropolitan province of Făgăraş and Alba, in 1850–1853, brought for the first time in the attention of the Holy See the problem of metropolitans’ rights and duties. As a newly established canonic institution, the metropolitan and its officials were to be abided by a juridical-ecclesiastic status which would conciliate, to the best of one’s possibilities, the stipulations of the Eastern canonic law with the prerogatives and the duties of Roman archbishops. The lack of some stipulations on that matter in the metropolitan’s establishment bulla led to the fact that the debates and controversies on the metropolitans’ rights and duties in the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church lasted more than two decades from the establishment of the metropolitan province. It was until the first provincial synod in 1872 that the Holy See, by the instrumentality of the De Propaganda Fide Congregation, decided the problem concerning the metropolites’ prerogatives and duties in the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church. The issued profile proves the fact that the tendency generally evinced by the Holy See was that of visibly restraining the metropolitan authority and subordinating it to the specific limits of Roman archbishops. In the case of the mitre in the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church, Rome’s repeated interventions finally led to a new institutional reality which no longer held but partially the rights and the prerogatives of the Eastern metropolitans.

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