Apostolic Letter for the Fourth Centenary of the Union of Brest
The letter in which Pope John Paul II marked four hundred years since the Union of Brest together with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. It states how the Catholic Church reads the union and gives the dates of its conclusion at Rome and its proclamation at Brest.
The letter was written for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the church that descends from the bishops who accepted the union, after what the letter calls its years underground and its regained freedom. It gives the dates as the Holy See reckons them: the union was effected at Rome on 23 December 1595 and solemnly proclaimed at Brest on 16 October 1596. It presents the union as a restoration of communion with Rome that referred back to the Council of Florence, stresses that the bishops kept their eastern identity and did not pass over to the Latin tradition, and recalls the persecutions that this church later suffered.
It is a document of one side, written four centuries after the event, and it is cited in this wiki for the Catholic and Greek Catholic reading of the union and for the dates. The same letter acknowledges that some regard the Eastern Catholic churches as an obstacle to unity with the Orthodox, and refers to the joint Catholic-Orthodox dialogue on that question.
Cited in
- October 1596, firm date