Cuius Regio

In Europe it was once common to convert whole peoples, by main force, from one Christian faith to another, on the historic principle of Cuius regio, eius religio ("whose rule, his religion"). Long in disuse, this principle was last week once again being honored in eastern Europe. The rule was Poland's, the religion, Roman Catholicism. Or so it was loudly and plausibly charged by those who were undergoing the "conversion"--7,000,000 Ukrainians in southeastern Poland.

Poland has some 24,000,000 Roman Catholics, nearly 75% of its population. Like most east-European nations, it has also an autonomous Orthodox Church and a Greek Catholic or "Uniat" Church, in communion with Rome but using its own form of Mass. Poland's Ukrainians are about equally divided between the Orthodox and Uniat Churches, which have been so friendly that the Uniat Primate is also a leader of the Orthodox faithful. The Primate, Count Andrey Sheptytsky, Arch bishop of Lwow, is almost seven feet tall, but paralyzed in arms and legs so that he cannot preach. Instead he makes phono graph records of his pronouncements, ships them throughout the Ukraine.

Trying to make themselves heard above other clamorous minorities last week (see p. 21), Polish Ukrainians complained that their Orthodox churches, some of them extremely ancient, were being systematically pulled down or turned into Roman Catholic churches. Of 350 which existed in 1918, all but 50 have vanished or changed hands, most of them during the past year. Both Orthodox and Uniat faithful, the Ukrainians declared, have been forced to adopt Roman Catholicism.

Neither the Vatican nor Archbishop Sheptytsky has pretended to be grateful for this exercise of Cuius regio. They well know that the Polish Government wishes to crush Ukrainian nationalist tendencies, centred in the churches, and also to stir up religious bitterness among the Ukrainians. In the latter aim it has succeeded. In a pastoral, suppressed by the Government but circulated (in English) in London and Manhattan last week, Archbishop Sheptytsky admitted that the destruction of Ukrainian churches had "cast the odium for what has transpired on the Apostolic See....A new abyss is being opened between the Eastern and the Catholic Churches."

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