The Carpatho-Rusyns

· The Carpatho-Rusyns are an East Slavic people group that has historically inhabited the area of Central and Eastern Europe know as Carpathian Rus’. They are known by several different names including: Ruskyi, Ruthenians, Rusin, Lemkos, Carpatho-Russians, Uhro-Rusyns, Uhro-Rusin, and Rusnaks. For at least the last thousand years, the Carpatho-Rusyn people have lived in small villages scattered along the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in what is today Southern Poland, Eastern Slovakia, Western Ukraine, and Northern Romania. Living in the Carpathian Mountains, the Carpatho-Rusyns are traditionally a rural and agricultural people making a living as subsistence farmers.

· As an East Slavic people, Carpatho-Rusyns are ethnically similar to Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians. Since they are a people that have never had a nation of their own, there is debate over who exactly the Carpatho-Rusyn people are. Some people even claim that they are not a separate ethnic group, but instead are a subgroup of the Ukrainian people.

· While Carpatho-Rusyns still live in their European homeland, they have also migrated elsewhere in both Europe and around the world. The countries that today have a significant Carpatho-Rusyn population are: Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, and the United States. The Academy of Rusyn Culture estimates that there is anywhere between 1.2-1.6 million people of Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry in the world today. However, only 90,000 people have been officially identified as Carpatho-Rusyns in national censuses. This is due to a variety of historic factors, such as the repression of the Carpatho-Rusyn identity for decades under communist rule in Europe.

· Carpatho-Rusyns immigrated from their European homeland to the United States mostly between 1880 and 1920. Thousands of them left their homes and everything they knew behind never to return. They set out for the unknown with the hope that life would be better for them in the United States. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, saw the massive migration of Slavic peoples such as Carpatho-Rusyns, Slovaks, Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians, and Russians leave Europe for the United States. The Carpatho-Rusyns’ story is typical of other Southern and Eastern European immigrant groups that came to the United States at the same time. They were looking for new economic opportunities that they could not find at home in Europe.

· The Carpatho-Rusyn people are today members of various Eastern Rite Christian denominations. The story of their religious faith reflects the unique history of the Carpatho-Rusyn people. They received Christianity in the ninth century from the Byzantine Church of Constantinople. This meant that for centuries, the Carpatho-Rusyns were members of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

· By the seventeenth century, the Carpatho-Rusyns found themselves under the rule of the Catholic Hapsburg Empire. Wanting to gain favor within the Empire, in 1646 sixty-three Carpatho-Rusyn priests entered into the Union of Užhorod. Under this union, the Carpatho-Rusyns became members of the Catholic Church under the authority of the Pope, but were allowed to keep some of the unique practices and traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, such as allowing priests to marry. The church established by the Union of Užhorod, originally called the Uniate Church, would eventually be known as the Greek Catholic Church, a name still used in Europe today.

· When the Carpatho-Rusyns immigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth century, they brought their Greek Catholic faith with them. These immigrants established their own church in the United States called the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church (Ruthenian being the Latin name for the Carpatho-Rusyn people.) This church can still be found in the United States as the Byzantine Catholic Church.

· Byzantine Catholics are full members of the Catholic Church and share many religious practices with Roman Catholics. These include the importance of the seven sacraments, the use of the same set of scriptures, recognition of the authority of the Pope, and the veneration of saints. However, there are some noticeable differences between the Byzantine and Roman Catholic Churches that are evidence of the Byzantine Catholic Church’s Eastern Orthodox roots. These include the use of the Orthodox Sign of the Cross, the way the faithful receive Holy Communion, the use of the Orthodox liturgical calendar, the use and veneration of icons, and the presence of an iconostasis (icon screen) in their churches.