The Eastern Catholic Diaspora in Contemporary Europe: Context and Challenges

Research indicates Christianity is now a truly 'global' religion growing in Asia, the Global South and Africa, with seismic shifts to its structures in the historical heartlands in the Middle East. Contemporary European religion is in a state of flux, some see this as the death of Christian hegemony with a more pluralistic and 'secular' society. Others fear the consequences of growing fundamentalism within other religious groups but there are also positive grounds for hope. Catholicism remains the largest of the European Christian denominations. The future picture is interesting due to the growth in diaspora Middle Eastern church communities, particularly Eastern Catholics. Often ignored, these 22 churches in communion with Rome have a number of theological and ecclesial insights to offer religious debate, cultural and ecumenical relationships between Christian churches, other religions and wider society. The Eastern Catholic churches deserve to be better known as their history and situation enables them to speak from a very different perspective; they are in communion with Rome yet distinctly 'eastern' in tradition, they have survived as a minority religious group and adapted to different cultures, and numerically small, they are churches that have the potential to build theological and ecclesial bridges across the religious divide.