Original scientific paper
ECCLESIASTICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN CROATIA AND BULGARIA IN THE NINETEENTH AND THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Slavko SLIŠKOVIĆ
Abstract
In spite of different confessional allegiance, the Croatians and Bulgarians were for centuries connected, among other things, also on the ecclesiastical plane. Inclination for observing the ideals of the Early Church led sometimes ones and the others on the fringe
of the official Christianity. While sharing common life space under the mighty Ottoman rule, they tried to preserve their original faith and were not afraid to offer it also to their neighbor. Croatian Catholics influenced spreading and formation of Catholic structures in Bulgaria, while Bulgarian Orthodox Christians were among the proponents of the spreading of the Orthodoxy in Croatian areas. Members of the Croatian regular clergy used the opening of the Balkan countries to the Western influences to bring religious instruction, education, social and medical care to the Bulgarian people, which suffered for centuries under the Ottoman yoke. The absence of the international conflicts among them, which on the South-East of Europe have also
reflection on the confessional plane, made Catholic Croatians and Orthodox Bulgarians perceptible for common cooperation and coexistence. In the hard times of the World War II, there were resuscitated interest for the establishment of the Croatian Orthodox Church, even though with the rather unclear motives. The help for the realisation of this project was searched for also in Bulgaria. For its members who settled Croatian areas through time, Bulgarian Orthodox Church organised pastoral care and acquired legal personality in the Republic of Croatia, finding for that goal the understanding of both the civil authorities and the Catholic Church. Continuing tradition, but also opening the new fields of work, male and female members of Croatian regular clergy are active participants of the ecclesiastical life of the Catholics in Bulgaria even now, while Bulgarian Orthodox Church makes an important segment of the religious and confessional mosaic of Croatian contemporary society.
Keywords
Croatians; Bulgarians; Catholicism; Orthodoxy; regular clergy; the nineteenth century; the twentieth century; the history of the Christianity
Hrčak ID:
74299
URI
Publication date:
21.6.2011.
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