Uniate

Senior Orthodox cleric Metropolitan Hilarion said that long-standing differences between the two churches remain, most notably a row over the status of the Uniate Church in Ukraine.

"The Eastern Catholic churches banned by Stalin re-emerged, especially in Ukraine and Romania, and from the Orthodox came the old accusation about Uniate churches and proselytism."

Though the establishment of the Uniate churches cannot be divorced from its place in an outdated tradition of tit-for-tat inter-Christian conversions, the result demonstrates what an practical Christian unity could look like.

If the Polish and Russian Bishops are allowed to come, they too will swell the majority; and so, it is believed, will the Armenian and Uniate Bishops in Austria, Russia, and Bulgaria, numbering about 40.

In Transylvania the Uniate church became an important medium by which Romanian national identity was fostered in the struggle against foreign assimilation.