Church and parish of the Holy Trinity at Vienna, and all the Orthodox in Vienna who are neither Turkish subjects nor Slavs belong to this parish. The one Orthodox parish in Trieste also forms part of this Church. The three bishops form a Congress of which my Lord of Czernovitz is president. They are paid by the Government out of funds amounting to fifteen million florins, and they sit in the House of Lords at Vienna. The Church of Czernovitz counts about five hundred and eighty-four thousand of the faithful, divided into three hundred and thirty-nine parishes which are organized in twenty-one protopresbyteries (deaneries); it has three monasteries in Bukovina, and eleven in Dalmatia.[1] Its autocephalous character is, of course, recognized and accepted by all the other Orthodox bodies. The original movement for separation from Carlovitz was a Vlach one; but only about half the members of this Church are Vlachs and half Slavs i (chiefly Serbs). There is now a party of the Slavs who accuse the Vlachs of keeping all the emoluments for themselves, of not allowing the Servian language its due place in the liturgy;[2] in short, of trying to Roumanize the whole body.[3] On the strength of these complaints they want to divide this little Church further into two independent communions, one for the Vlachs and one for the Slavs. The Government has not as yet shown much sympathy with this plan (which the Vlachs strongly oppose), and, indeed, if one were to grant all their wishes, there would be no end to
- ↑ According to the official Austrian Schematismus the exact figures are:—
Parishes. Protopresbyteries. Orthodox Population. Czernovitz 242 12 478,118 Zara 54 5 76,866 Cattaro 43 4 28,722 339 21 583,706 - ↑ Theoretically the liturgy is to be said either in Roumanian or Servian according to the language most used in each parish. Really it depends rather on what language the priest prefers.
- ↑ The present Metropolitan of Czernovitz (Vladimir), a Vlach, is accused of this policy.
