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In their clergy, both of the Orthodox and the Uniate Church which last, while conducting its ritual in the vernacular, recognizes papal supremacy the Rumanians have always found strong moral support, while the national struggle tends to unite the various classes. The Rumanians of Hungary form by far the sanest element in the Rumanian nation.
But they were Nationalists, and when the proposal for a Uniate Church was mooted, declared they would adhere to Rome. The news of this having spread, upset the Orthodox Powers to such an extent that a Russian Vice-Consul was sent hurriedly to the spot.
"Religion," writes Constantine, "is a very real thing to the Galician and on this matter he feels very strongly." Constantine made special study of the situation. There were three different branches of the church amongst these people, the Roman and Greek Catholic and the Orthodox Russian or Uniate Church, which was in creed and ritual a sort of half-way between the other two.
A definite effort was being made at Elbasan to break with the Greek Church. An Albanian priest had visited Rome, and there asked leave to establish at Elbasan a Uniate Church. He was the son of a rich man, and having obtained the assent of Rome returned with the intention of building the church himself, and had even bought a piece of land for it.
The Russians had not done much to commend their cause to the inhabitants during their stay; the opportunity was seized for proselytizing in the interests of the Orthodox Church, and Sczeptycki the Archbishop of Lemberg, a member of the Uniate Church which had made terms with Roman Catholicism, was treated with a harshness compared with which the indignities inflicted by the Germans upon Cardinal Mercier of Malines were trivial; he was interned in a Russian monastery and deprived of all religious rites save those which were to him heretical.
Incidentally much will depend upon the attitude adopted by the Russian Government towards its new Catholic subjects. Its relations with the Vatican will require to be placed upon an entirely new footing, and due respect must be accorded to the Uniate Catholic Church of the four million Ruthenes of Galicia.
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