| Ordinariate for Eastern Catholics in Brazil | |
| Province: | Immediately exempt to the Holy See |
| Rite: | Several |
| Established: | 14 November 1951 |
| Population As Of: | 1998 |
| Catholics: | 10,000 |
| Parishes: | 4 |
| Bishop: | Walmor Oliveira de Azevedo |
The Ordinariate of Brazil for the faithful of the Eastern rite or Brazil of the Eastern Rite (Portuguese: Ordinariato para os Fiéis de Ritos Orientais no Brasil) is an ordinariate (diocese-like structure of the Catholic Church) for the Eastern Catholics in Brazil without proper jurisdiction of their own particular churches sui iuris.
It is immediately exempt to the Holy See and its Roman Congregation for the Oriental Churches, not part of any ecclesiastical province. The ordinariate is headquartered Rua Cosme Velho 470, 20241-090 Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil and currently governed by Walmor Oliveira de Azevedo, (Latin) Metropolitan Archbishop of Belo Horizonte, but not vested in a particular see.
The Ordinariate was erected on 14 November 1951 with the papal decree Cum fidelium[1] of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, which gave effect to a decision ex audientia of Pope Pius XII took on 26 October 1950, as Ordinariato para os Fiéis de Ritos Orientais no Brasil.
The same decree appointed the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Jaime de Barros Câmara, as its first ordinary.
On April 13, 1952 Barros Câmara inaugurated the ordinariate, appointed Francisco Nogueira Bessa as General Secretary of the same and created a system of general vicariates for the 3 major communities, each with its general guard: Elias Gorayeb for the Maronites, Archimandrite Elias Coueter for the Greek Melkites and Clemente Preima for the Ukrainians.[2] [3]
Since the establishment of the ordinariate, several Eastern Catholic churches have erected proper ecclesiastical jurisdictions within Brazil, with members now falling under these new jurisdictions:
The ordinariate includes all the faithful of the eastern rite of Brazil without their own jurisdiction. Its seat was the city of Rio de Janeiro, but its current headquarters is the city of Belo Horizonte, because since 2010 its ordinary is the metropolitan archbishop of Belo Horizonte Walmor Oliveira de Azevedo. Previously, the previous 3 ordinary were archbishops of Rio de Janeiro and the headquarters was in this city.
As per 1998 it pastorally served 10,000 baptized Eastern Catholic Brazilians in 4 parishes with 5 priests (2 diocesan, 3 religious) and 3 lay religious brothers.
At present it only attends Syriac Catholic faithful, who have a parish, but the small communities of Italian-Albanian and Russian faithful dispersed and the faithful of other rites are insignificant in number and dispersed.
Although the 2016 Pontifical Yearbook mentions the existence of 4 parishes in the Ordinariate,[5] but there is only one Eastern Catholic parish in Belo Horizonte, known as Igreja do Sagrado Coração de Jesus dos Siríacos Católicos, whose parish priest, George Rateb Massis, is the Syriac Catholic vicar of the ordinariate.The Capela Nossa Senhora da Anunciação of Ipiranga in São Paulo belonged since 1954 to the Ordinariate as a Russian Catholic mission, but after the death in 2005 of its parish priest, João Stoisser, its few remnant faithful become part of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church together with the chapel. A small community of Italo-Albanian Byzantine rite used the Igreja de Nossa Senhora Aparecida[6] in Riachuelo neighbourd in Rio de Janeiro until the death in 2002 of the parish priest Atanasio Accursi. Since then the mission has dispersed.
(all Roman Rite)