I only have the parish numbers that RISU has:
http://risu.org.ua/en/index/resourses/statistics/ukr-reg2004
and the things the UOC/Muchakev and Muchakev-(Vat.) puts out.
« Last Edit: Today at 04:53:55 PM by ialmisry »
But those figures are from Jan. 2004, over 8 years ago. Too much has happened since then.
Like what?
Plus, the figures are only for the number of church buildings. We cannot tell how many members a parish has. For example in one village there could be one church with only 25 people in it and another church in the same village with 1,000 people as members.
I don't get the impression (especially with the lastest on the Pochayiv Lavra) that the dust over possession of Churches has settled, and so it would seem that the reason-an indication of local ecclesiastical loyalty and strenght-remains.
8 year old figures are not accurate for 2012. You said you had access to the vaitcan figures: can you supply them. The Widipedia article cites the Greek Catholics as the majority.
The UOC-KP for 2010/2011 claims:
40 parishes
1 monastery
44 archpriests
42 priests
Cathedral: Uzhhorod: 12 Apostles
http://www.cerkva.info/uk/knygy/history.html
Your 2008 source has: UOC KP 18 / 2
For 1990, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2010, the Vatican's official stats for its Ukrainians and Ruthenians:
http://www.cnewa.us/source-images/Roberson-eastcath-statistics/eastcatholic-stat10.pdfIt has no figures for the Orthodox, and since the total population of Karpattia was about 1,240,000
http://ukrainetrek.com/zakarpattia-oblastthat leaves 860,000 unaccounted for, more than twice the numbers claimed for the Vatican's eparchy of Mukachevo. The RISA gives 244 registered, 10 unregistered in 2004 for the Vatican. The RISU show list the Ruthenian sui juris Mukachevo eparchy separately, but it seems to toe the UGCC's party line and lump Mukachevo in the latter. It has, for 2011, 3,646 registered, 1 unregistered for the UGCC for the whole of Ukraine. That is up from 3328/12 in 2004.
Even if the Eparchy got all 307 of the increase recorded for all of Ukraine, that would give it 661. If we thought that the UOC did not grow, it would be outnumbered only by 87, and the Vatican would have the upperhand only by 59 over all the Orthodox (58, if you count the Old Believers). That is, if we take as a given that the Orthodox did not increase.
The UOC had 11,952 registered, 91 unregistered in 2011 (up from 10,310/74 in 2004), the "KP" 4,371 registered, 30 unregistered in 2011 (up from 3,352/43 in 2004), and the "UAOC" 1,190 registered, 3 unregistered in 2011 (up from 1,154/2 in 2004 )
So no indication that the UGCC is gaining on the Orthodox, nor that the UOC has lost its place. Btw, the Vatican figures show 5,159,633 for the UGCC (excluding Mukachevo, which numbered 320,000 according to its calculation), falling in 5 years to 4,268,577 (Mukachevo remaining at 320,000), approximately the time that the figures it gives broken down by oblasts, and the five years since then showing only an increase of 82,158, while according an increase of 60,000 to Mukachevo, i.e. 73% of the increase of the Vatican's eastern following in the whole of the rest of Ukraine. Zakarpattia has nowhere near 73% of the total population of Ukraine, in either general terms nor terms of churchgoers. So the wikipedia's statement "The largest denomination is the Ruthenian Catholic Church; the oblast's territory forms the church's Eparchy of Mukachevo; with 380,000 faithful, it has a solid majority of the oblast's churchgoers" is a little problematic, as is the statement "the Eastern Orthodox are usually Romanians, Russians, or
Ukrainians from further east." There were plenty of Orthodox, the fruit of St. Alexis Kobaliuk's labors among others, in Transcarpathia before Stalin annexed it to Ukraine. In fact, their numbers were drew the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia from WRO (to which St. Gorazd had been consecrated as bishop of Moravia and Silesia) back into the Eastern Rite first planted by SS. Cyril and Methodius in Moravia. They had shown their Russophile tendencies under the Habsburgs, and were persecuted for them. There is no need to import "Ukrainians from further East" to have an Orthodox Church in the oblast (except if one wanted to insist on a Ukrainian, rather than Ruthenian, one).
Since they all show an increase in religious organizations around 10%, it does not seem that the relative strengths in numbers have changed all that much. And the fact that the UOC has organized the oblast into two dioceses (Mukachevo and Khust), as opposed to the Vatican's one and the "KP"'s one, would seem to indicate that it is holding its own. Of course, its job isn't done until it is 100% of the population confess Orthodoxy, and struggle in it, but then that's not any different from the rest of us, whether in Moscow, Constantinople, Bucharest, Athens, Rome, Paris, London, Washington or Chicago.