International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Alessandro Milani
Università di Trieste, Trieste, Italy / École pratique des haute études, Paris, France; 
[e-mail]
The Issue of the Greek Catholics in Galicia and Transcarpathia 
within the Bilateral Relations between the Holy See and 
Interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia (1919-1929)
This paper analyzes my ongoing research about claims that governments meddled in the 
Church affairs of Western-Ukrainian Greek Catholics in interwar Poland and Czechoslovakia 
between 1919 and 1929. By “Western Ukrainians” are meant Eastern Slavic populations living in both 
Polish Galicia and Czechoslovakian Transcarpathia, even though the latter are generally referred to 
as Rusyns. Belonging to two separate Byzantine Churches in communion with Rome, Ukrainian 
Galicians and Transcarpathians were never able to merge into a unitary entity from the collapse of 

---

679
Kiev onward (except for the short-lived West Ukrainian Republic 1918-1919). My research mainly 
focuses on the relations between the Holy See, Polish and Czechoslovakian episcopates, the secular 
governments then in power in Warsaw and Prague, the Greek Catholic hierarchies, the Roman 
Curia and their efforts to preserve Eastern traditions. In particular, I examine the appointment 
of bishops and the control of their pastoral activities before and after the 1925 Polish Concordat 
and the 1927 Modus vivendi between Prague and the Holy See. These two countries enacted two 
opposing ethno-religious policies.

---

BYZANTINE ARTISTIC TRADITION AND THE WESTERN WORLD
Chairs: 
Günter Paulus Schiemenz, Dubravka Preradović
Tonje
Haugland Sørensen
, 
The Unintended Monument – Byzantium in Western European Heritage