Οι Ουνίτες στην Τουρκία και στην Ελλάδα The Uniate church in Turkey and in Greece El En

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A religious movement known under the name of «Uniates», i.e.: groups ofGreek Catholics holding Byzantine rite, started its activity in Istanbul as earlyas the second half of the XIX century. At the same time Bulgarian Uniatesstarted their activity in Macedonia.Towards the end of the second half of the XIX century, minor groups ofGreek Uniates started to consolidate their churches in Malkara (Tekirdag) andGallipoli. These small-sized religious communities consisted basically of anumber of families scattered all over the region.Although running parallel, the two movements went through a quite differentdevelopment in their respective countries. As a matter of fact, whiletheBulgarian Uniates grew in importance as the number of their followers increased,their Greek counterpart did not seem either to thrive or to exparid inIstanbul.During the period of the exchange of populations between Greece andTurkey (1923), the majority of Istanbul’s community and the entire communitiesof Malkara and Gallipoli chose to migrate to Greece with their clerics.Over the past seventy years the community of Uniates still existing in Istanbulhas gradually become smaller and smaller, which made it unnecessaryfor their parishes and worship establishments to be kept open. As a consequence,since 1996 the few parishioners have started joining Latin Catholicchurches for religious ceremonies owing to the fact that the last Uniate priestdied in that year. Since then the community has been under the jurisdiction ofthe Apostolic Vicar of Istanbul.