Polish Orthodox Church

The Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church , commonly known as the Polish Orthodox Church, or Orthodox Church of Poland, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches in full communion. The church was established in 1924, to accommodate Orthodox Christians of Polish descent in the eastern part of the country, when Poland regained its independence after the First World War.

Autocephaly was finally granted by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in November 1924.

During the interwar period, however, the Polish authorities imposed severe restrictions on the church and its clergy. In the most famous example, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw was destroyed in the mid-1920s. In Volhynia a total of 190 Eastern Orthodox churches were destroyed and a further 150 converted to Catholicism.Healy, R. and Dal Lago, E. The Shadow of Colonialism on Europe’s Modern Past. Several court hearings against the Pochaiv Lavra also took place. ІСТОРИЧНА ВОЛИНЬ: Спроби ревіндикації луцького Свято-Троїцького собору

In total, it has approximately 500,000 adherents (2016).Główny Urząd Statystyczny, Mały Rocznik Statystyczny Polski 2016, Warszawa 2017, tab. 18(80), s. 115. In the Polish census of 2011, 156,000 citizens declared themselves as members.Paweł Ciecieląg, Andrzej Datko, Bożena Łazowska, Piotr Łysoń, Paweł Milcarek, Wojciech Sadłoń: 1050 lat chrześcijaństwa w Polsce. Warszawa: GUS, 2016, s. 73. .

References

Category:Religion in Poland
Category:Eastern Orthodox Church