The Eastern part of the European continent, including – but not limited to – Russia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Three quarters of the population of the eparchy (or diocese) of Ivano-Frankivsk in Western Ukraine are members of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. This Church is in communion with Rome but celebrates the Liturgy in the Byzantine rite. That makes this diocese the largest community of this particular rite in Ukraine, in terms of the number of faithful.
Nachodkah is a port city– and one of the easternmost cities in all of Russia. Looking out towards the Pacific Ocean, it is almost 3,950 miles from Moscow. That is about the same distance as from Berlin to New York!
Wonderfully, the Greek Catholic Order of Saint Basil in Ukraine is not short of vocations. Currently there are 48 novices in formation at the seminary in Lviv. In all, the Basilian Order has some 340 members in 29 different monasteries. Their novice house is in Kharkhiv, in East Ukraine, and has its own land and livestock around it.
The Poor Clare Sisters in Brestovsko in Bosnia and Herzegovina are young, with an average age of 41. Only one of them is over 60, and the two youngest are just 24 and 26. The convent was founded in 1989, immediately after the collapse of communism in the country, at a time when the old Yugoslavia still existed. Four religious Sisters came from Split, now part of Croatia, to establish a new convent in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the 1930s, a dozen or more Ukrainian girls traveled to Belgium in order to prepare for the foundation of the first Redemptorist convent in their home country of Ukraine. It was not until 80 years later that this dream was finally able to see its fulfillment. The outbreak of the Second World War and …