Rites
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The Catholic Church
The liturgical traditions of the one Catholic Church — the Latin (Roman) Rite and the Eastern Catholic rites — each with its own history.
Byzantine-rite Christians in southern Albania sought communion with Rome in the modern era, and before the Second World War the Holy See erected an apostolic administration to care for them. Under the militantly atheist regime that outlawed all public worship in 1967, the community was driven underground and its clergy imprisoned; it re-emerged with the return of religious freedom in 1991 and remains one of the smallest of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
The Alexandrian tradition grew from the Church of Alexandria, whose foundation Christian antiquity attributes to the preaching of Saint Mark. Egypt gave the Church her first monks, her great catechetical school, and the theology of Saint Athanasius and Saint Cyril, and the liturgy of Alexandria carried that inheritance south into the Ethiopian highlands, where it took root in the Ge'ez language. The Catholic Churches of this family — Coptic, Ethiopian and Eritrean — hold the tradition in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.
The Ambrosian Rite is the ancient Latin liturgical tradition of the Archdiocese of Milan, named for Saint Ambrose (d. 397). It preserves distinctive chant, calendar, and ceremonies and survived the general adoption of the Roman Rite in the West.
Provision was first made in 1980 for groups of former Anglicans received into the Catholic Church in the United States to keep elements of their liturgical patrimony. On 4 November 2009 Pope Benedict XVI issued the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, which erected personal ordinariates for such groups: Our Lady of Walsingham in Great Britain (2011), the Chair of Saint Peter in the United States and Canada (2012), and Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia (2012). The liturgical books Divine Worship: The Missal, approved by the Holy See, came into use on the First Sunday of Advent 2015.
The Armenian Catholic Church preserves the distinctive liturgical tradition of Armenia, the first nation to embrace Christianity as its state religion (AD 301). The Armenian Catholics entered into full communion with Rome and are governed by their own Patriarch of Cilicia.
Belarusian Greek Catholics descend from the Union of Brest (1596), by which the Ruthenian metropolitanate of Kyiv entered into full communion with Rome. In 1839 the union was suppressed within the Russian Empire and the faithful were absorbed into the Orthodox Church; small groups persisted and the tradition was deliberately revived in the twentieth century, chiefly among Belarusians in exile, before returning openly to Belarus after 1991.
The Beneventan Rite was a Roman Catholic liturgical rite used in the "Beneventan" zone comprising continental Southern Italy and Dalmatia. It can be characterized by the usage of Benevenutan Chant and Beneventan Script, as well as the particular devotion to local Saints such as Saint Januarius.
Braga, the primatial see of Portugal, shaped its own Latin liturgical books in the Middle Ages out of the older Hispanic and Roman materials that met in the north-west of the peninsula. When the Council of Trent allowed the retention of uses already two centuries old, Braga kept its missal and breviary, printing them for its clergy and revising them in the twentieth century. Since the liturgical reform the archdiocese has ordinarily used the Roman books, and the Bragan use is celebrated on particular occasions as a treasured part of its heritage.
A movement of Bulgarian Christians toward communion with Rome came to a head in 1861, when Pope Pius IX himself ordained the archimandrite Joseph Sokolski a bishop for them in Rome. The community survived war, population exchanges and forty years of communist rule; an apostolic exarchate governed it from Sofia through the twentieth century, and in 2019 Pope Francis raised that exarchate to the Eparchy of Saint John XXIII of Sofia.
The Byzantine Rite took shape in Constantinople, drawing on the liturgical heritage of Antioch and the city's great churches. It is followed by the largest family of Eastern Catholic Churches, who use the Divine Liturgies of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil the Great.
Saint Bruno withdrew with six companions into the mountains above Grenoble in 1084 and founded the Grande Chartreuse. The customs written down for the order in the following generation fixed a liturgy drawn from the usages of Lyon and Grenoble, deliberately stripped of elaboration to suit a life of solitude. Retained after the Council of Trent as an immemorial use, it was revised after the Second Vatican Council and continues in the charterhouses today.
The Chaldean Catholic Church descends from the ancient Church of the East in Mesopotamia and entered into full communion with Rome in the sixteenth century. It follows the East Syriac liturgical tradition centered on the Holy Qurbana of the Apostles Addai and Mari.
The Coptic Catholic Church arises from the ancient Christian tradition of Egypt, attributed to the preaching of Saint Mark. It follows the Alexandrian liturgical tradition and entered into full communion with Rome in the nineteenth century.
The Church grew from unions among Byzantine-rite Christians who settled in the Croatian and Hungarian military frontier from the early seventeenth century, and from Rusyn colonists who came to the Bačka region in the eighteenth. Pope Pius VI erected the Eparchy of Križevci for them in 1777. In 2018 Pope Francis erected the Eparchy of Saint Nicholas of Ruski Krstur in Serbia, and the two eparchies together now form this Church sui iuris.
The Order of Preachers, confirmed in 1216, needed one liturgy for friars who moved constantly between provinces. Under Blessed Humbert of Romans the order's books were unified in the mid-thirteenth century, drawing on the usages of northern France, and this Dominican use was kept after the Council of Trent as older than two hundred years. Since the liturgical reform the friars ordinarily celebrate the Roman Rite, while the Dominican use continues to be celebrated with the permission of the order's superiors.
The East Syriac tradition arose in Mesopotamia, beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire, among Christians who prayed in Syriac and produced a missionary Church of extraordinary reach: its monks and merchants carried the Gospel along the trade routes to Central Asia, China and India. Two Catholic Churches sui iuris hold this patrimony — the Chaldean Catholic Church of Iraq and the Syro-Malabar Church of Kerala, whose Saint Thomas Christians trace their origin to the Apostle himself.
Catholics of the Ge'ez tradition in Eritrea long formed part of the Ethiopian Catholic metropolitan Church. After Eritrea's independence, and in recognition of the distinct situation of its eparchies, Pope Francis in January 2015 erected the Eritrean Catholic Church as a metropolitan Church sui iuris, with the Metropolitan Archeparchy of Asmara and the eparchies of Barentu, Keren and Segheneiti.
The Ethiopic Catholic tradition arises from the ancient Christianity of Ethiopia and Eritrea and follows the Alexandrian liturgical family in the Ge'ez language. The Ethiopian and Eritrean Catholic Churches preserve this venerable heritage in communion with Rome.
Greek Catholics of the Byzantine tradition gathered in the late nineteenth century around priests who wished to serve Greeks in communion with Rome while keeping their own liturgy entirely intact. An exarchate was established for them in the Ottoman capital early in the twentieth century, and a second in Greece itself, which continues today with its centre in Athens. The community was scattered by the population exchanges that followed the First World War and has remained very small ever since.
Byzantine-rite communities in the Kingdom of Hungary entered into full communion with Rome in the seventeenth century, their union consolidated at Uzhhorod in 1646. Because they had come to pray in Hungarian, Pope Saint Pius X erected the Eparchy of Hajdúdorog for them in 1912. The Church endured the communist decades and in 2015 Pope Francis raised it to a metropolitan Church sui iuris, with the Archeparchy of Hajdúdorog and the Eparchies of Miskolc and Nyíregyháza.
This Church has never been separated from Rome. It gathers the ancient Greek-rite communities of southern Italy together with the Arbëresh — Albanians who fled the Ottoman conquest from the fifteenth century onward and settled in Calabria and Sicily, bringing their Byzantine liturgy with them. The monastery of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata, founded in 1004 by Saint Nilus of Rossano, has kept Greek monastic life alive in Italy without interruption ever since.
Byzantine-rite Catholics in Macedonia trace their communion with Rome to unions among the Slavic Christians of the region in the nineteenth century. Their communities were long attached to the eparchy of Križevci; in 2001 the Holy See erected an apostolic exarchate for them, and in 2018 Pope Francis raised it to the Eparchy of the Blessed Virgin Mary Assumed in Strumica–Skopje, making them a Church sui iuris of their own.
The Maronite Church traces its origin to Saint Maron, a fourth-century Syrian hermit, and his disciples. Centered in Lebanon, it has remained in unbroken communion with Rome and preserves the West Syriac (Antiochene) liturgical tradition with its own distinctive usages.
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church, centered in the Middle East, follows the Byzantine liturgical tradition in Arabic and Greek. It entered into full communion with Rome in the eighteenth century and is led by the Patriarch of Antioch.
The Mozarabic (Hispano-Visigothic) Rite is the ancient Latin liturgy of the Iberian Peninsula, developed before the Muslim conquest and preserved by Christians under Moorish rule. Cardinal Cisneros revived it at Toledo around 1500.
The Romanians of Transylvania entered into full communion with Rome through synods held at Alba Iulia in 1697 and 1700 under Bishop Athanasius Anghel. Blaj became the Church's heart and a cradle of Romanian letters and national awakening. In 1948 the communist government suppressed the Church outright: its bishops were arrested and died in prison or under house arrest, and seven of them have since been beatified as martyrs. The Church returned to public life with the revolution of 1989, and in 2005 Pope Benedict XVI raised it to a Major Archiepiscopal Church.
Your rite
The Roman Rite developed in the city of Rome and became the predominant liturgical tradition of the Western Church. Codified after the Council of Trent (1570) and revised after the Second Vatican Council (1969-70), it is the rite of the vast majority of Latin Catholics worldwide.
Small numbers of Russians sought communion with Rome while keeping the Byzantine liturgy of their homeland untouched. In 1917 an apostolic exarchate was erected for them, with Blessed Leonid Feodorov as exarch; he was imprisoned by the Soviet authorities and died in 1935. A second exarchate was established at Harbin in Manchuria in 1928 for Russians in exile. Both remain vacant, and the faithful today are few and widely dispersed.
The Ruthenian (Byzantine Catholic) Church traces its communion with Rome to the Union of Uzhhorod (1646). It follows the Byzantine liturgical tradition and is established in Central Europe and the United States.