The Ruthenian faith-journey begins in the homeland of our ancestors, “the old country,” central Europe. The word Ruthenian was originally used by the Catholic Church to describe the Byzantine (Greek) Catholics of Eastern Europe, predominantly those who were under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Envision a map of the European continent. Our ancestral homeland known variously as Carpathian Rus’, Transcarpathia, Carpatho-Ruthenia, Carpatho-Russia, and Carpatho-Ukraine is the very heart of the picture, presently eastern Slovakia, southwest Ukraine, northeast Hungary and northwest Romania.
The religious life of these people came from the East. Like the other East Slavs, the Carpatho-Rusins received Christianity from the Byzantine Empire.
In the year 863, two Byzantine Greek missionaries, the brothers Cyril and Methodius – “The Apostles to the Slavs” – introduced Christianity and the new Slavonic alphabet to Greater Moravia, the present Czech Republic and Western Slovakia.
Thereafter, the followers of these Byzantine missionaries moved eastward, eventually converting the Ruthenian people.
During the late nineteenth century-early twentieth century many of these faithful traveled to the United States seeking employment, and their own Greek Catholic parishes. In 1924, Rome established the Pittsburgh Eparchy for the Ruthenians with Bishop Basil Takach as the first hierarch.