Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bar

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bar (Latin: Archidioecesis Antibarensis ) based in the Montenegrin port city of Bar was established as a diocese in the 9th century, and in 1034 raised to the archbishopric. It belongs to no church province and is subject to the Holy See directly. At a size of 13,138 km ², the archdiocese comprises almost the entire country, except in the area of the Bay of Kotor, which in Kotor has its own bishop ( Diocese of Kotor ).

The Roman Catholics represent only 2.2 percent of the population living in the territory of the Archdiocese. The sharp decline of the faithful is also due, in addition to the particularly strong in the former communist countries trend towards de-Christianization on a strong economic -related emigration. This continues today, as in Montenegro, unemployment is still very high. About 90 percent of the diocesan either live in the coastal region, in addition to a bar, especially in the towns of Budva and Ulcinj, or in the mountains Malesija in Tuzi. Slightly more than half of the faithful in the Archdiocese are albanischsprachig.

History

Christianity was already in the 3rd or 4th century entrance to the coastal region of present-day Montenegro, when this area belonged to the Roman province Praevallis. The division of the Roman Empire in the year 395 was significant in for Christianity in the region, as here, the interface between Eastern and Western Christianity was formed, which has the history of the Archdiocese of Bar had a decisive influence.

Until the 12th century belonged Dioclea, the medieval name of the region to the Byzantine Empire. However, the dioceses on the eastern Adriatic coast were under the Holy See in Rome. In addition to the justified in the 9th century diocese bar, there were bishops in Budva, Ulcinj, Kotor and Lezha. The Benedictine order established in the 10th and 11th centuries a number of monasteries in the region, which were for the close spiritual and cultural connection to Italy is important.

1034 bar was raised to the archdiocese. In addition to the dioceses mentioned above, Shkodra, desk and Sapa him were as suffragan dioceses. 1089, under the reign of Constantine Bodin, the Archdiocese of Bar was finally confirmed as archbishop. Previously, it had to resist the annexation by the Archdiocese of Dubrovnik. Since Constantine Bodin ruled as King of Serbia, the Archbishop of Bar also the Primate of Serbia, a title which the Archbishops of bar led to the recent history was. After the papal bull the Archdiocese of Bar was in charge of all the land between the rivers Sava, Danube, the Drin and the Bojana.

The seat of the Archbishop, Bar, was dominated by the collapse of Byzantine power on the Adriatic after a short independence alternately by the kings of Hungary and Serbia or the Republic of Venice. In the time of Tsar Stefan Dušan, the influence of Orthodoxy grew in the core area of the Archdiocese. The Serbian ruler founded several monasteries on the Adriatic coast, leaving Orthodox churches built to underpin its claim to power. In the second half of the 14th century, the dynasty of the Balšić established an independent principality Zeta. The Balšić came from the Orthodox over to the Roman Catholic denomination and they committed themselves against Pope Urban V to respect the rights and possessions of the Archbishop of Bar as well as the Bishop of Kotor and protect.

By 1450 the town of Bar came back under the control of the Roman Catholic Venice, while the hinterland was dominated by the orthodox prince Crnojević family that encouraged more their faith there. Some decades in bar and his church still under the protection of the Venetians until the city was first conquered in 1538 by the Turks, and after a second conquest in 1571 eventually became part of the Ottoman Empire. The then Archbishop John VIII came into Turkish captivity and was murdered after the battle of Lepanto. About half of the Roman Catholic population has left a bar in that time, while some of those left behind went over the following decades to Islam. The St. George's Cathedral was converted into a mosque.

But the archdiocese Bar remained under Turkish rule. It was an important focal point for the preservation of Catholicism, especially among the Albanians. The archbishops served both the Holy See and the Venetians with information about the church and political situation of Christians in the Vilayet of Shkodra. Your knowledge they gained quite often on secret trips through their parish, because the Ottomans did not permit the exercise of the episcopal office outside the city bar and they had no missionary activity of the Roman Catholic Church. The archbishops of bar then tried repeatedly to persuade the Venetians to reconquer the city. One such attempt ended in 1717 without success.

1878 bar and a large part of the diocese territory part of Montenegro. The archdiocese now belonged to a country where Orthodoxy was the state religion. The Holy See was the new political realities into account by he converted bar in 1886 in a immediates archdiocese and its suffragan remaining Lezha, desk and Sappa ( Budva and Ulcinj were lost in the 16th century ) to the archbishopric in 1867 formed Shkodra imputed. All these dioceses were in the then Ottoman Albania. Bar only was responsible for the Roman Catholics on the territory of Montenegro, which were of course to a large extent albanischsprachig. In Montenegro, lived in the early 20th century about 6,800 Roman Catholics. Their rights were regulated by the 1886 between the Holy See and the Principality closed Concordat. The archbishop received a state pension and the government funded annually to a student studying theology in Rome. At the request of Prince Nikolas gave Pope Leo XIII. to use the Archdiocese the right next to the old Slavic language the Latin for the celebration of the Roman liturgy, as was already traditionally been in some Dalmatian dioceses in medieval custom. See slawic rite

With the end of Montenegrin independence, the Concordat was invalid. Concordat negotiations with Yugoslavia failed in the 30s.

After the Second World War, the Archdiocese of Bar had a special meaning for the Albanian Catholics. In addition to the jurisdiction of the district in Kosovo Bar was the only region in which they could practice their faith freely, while in Albania the Roman Catholic life had been almost completely destroyed by the religious ban. So could be developed in the Albanian language only by priests of the Archdiocese of Bar and the Governorship Prizren after the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, which introduced the native language for worship, the necessary liturgical books. The resulting cash Albanian Missal is used to this day with only a few modifications in all Albanian-speaking dioceses.

The current Archbishop of Tirana, Rrok Mirdita, comes from the Archdiocese of Bar