Orthodoxy in Lithuania | True Lithuania
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Orthodoxy in Lithuania

Orthodoxy is the second-largest faith of Lithuania, however, it is the followed nearly entirely by ethnic minorities, primarily Russians. This is in stark contrast to Latvia, Estonia, or Finland where there are many Orthodox people of titular ethnicity. Interestingly, a separate Lithuanian Orthodox Church doesn’t even exist. All the Orthodox Church buildings are directly subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Church based in Moscow.

Vilnius, for centuries the capital of multi-religious Grand Duchy of Lithuania, had Orthodox churches since the 14th century. But this faith came to the other parts of Lithuania only after the annexation by the Russian Empire in 1795. Czarist policy of Russification brought large domed churches to the new wide squares and straight avenues, and so even today in Vilnius 19th century districts the Orthodox churches outnumber the Roman Catholic ones. Every major town of the 19th century Lithuania received its own Orthodox church (more than a single one in Vilnius and Kaunas). A minority of these buildings were ceded to the Roman Catholic community after the 1918 independence, but the iconic neo-Byzantine facades and domes remained intact even there.

Saint Nicholas church in central Vilnius is among the few Orthodox churches built before the Russian Imperial occupation of Lithuania in 1795. It was established as early as 1350, the current building dates to 1514 with major upgrades in 1865. It served the Uniate community in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In an Orthodox church, you may feel as being suddenly transferred to a land further east because there are usually no Lithuanian words whatsoever. Even signs for tourists are typically available only in Russian and English. The website of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania lacks any non-Russian version.

The bond between the Russian nation and the Orthodox church continued well into the 20th century. Even the anti-religious Soviets had preferential treatment of the Orthodox church in Lithuania. Under the Soviet rule, a large number of Catholic churches were closed down, whereas almost every Orthodox church remained open. Thus there was an equal number of open Catholic and Orthodox churches in Soviet Vilnius even though Catholic devotees outnumbered Orthodox ones by 10 to 1. The only monastery permitted to operate in Lithuania after the Soviets disbanded all the others was the Russian Orthodox Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius.

There are 43 Orthodox churches in Lithuania with the most interesting being in Vilnius. 4,6% follow this faith.

The interior of the Russian Orthodox church. There are no pews as people stand during the masses, which take some 2 hours. That is double the duration of a Catholic or Lutheran mass, as some of the parts of a Russian Orthodox Mass are repeated several times. At the front of the church is the iconostasis:
a 'wall' full of religious paintings. A priest performs some rituals behind it, invisible to the church-goers. However, the iconostasis opens at the pinnacle of the Mass.

Article written by Augustinas Žemaitis

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  1. Hello,
    I would like to know the names and locations of any Orthodox monasteries that existed in Lithuania around 1890, and where there records from that time may be stored. I am of Lithuanian descent and am trying to obtain information about one of my grandfathers. Thank you.

    • As the Russian Imperial authorities have at that time promoted Russification, there were numerous Orthodox monasteries, usually as “replacements” for Catholic monasteries. However, nearly all of such monasteries were closed after the Russian Imperial rule ended. Definite lists and information are hard to come by due to temporary nature of many such monasteries and the fact that most of the monks were not locals. Some of the Orthodox monasteries are better known, however, such as the Holy Spirit (Vilnius), Surdegis, Antalieptė, Kaunas (Pažaislis).

      If you seek birth and death records (when rites were performed by monks), these are typically stored in Lithuanian archives. We may offer archive search services.

  2. Correction. My prior Email gave an incomplete address. Sorry.

  3. As i know some of the first christian Lithuanians had adopted the Eastern rite by Byzantine and Rus missionaries way before the Teutonic Order or thr Polish Commonwealth bring Catholicism.A lot of the nobles of the eastern Lithuanian tribes had adopted Orthodoxy(before its annexation by Muscovy or the Teutonic Order’s expansion) .Most of them moved after the “crusades” of Lithuania in the east,in lands such as Belarus,Ukraine and Russia who became Slavs through the centuries(like many Lithuanians became Polish after they became Catholics).So also Lithuanians were Orthodox and not just Russians who had been tranfered there .

    • You are correct that eastern part of the Lithuanian state was Orthodox-majority in the Medieval era. However, these lands were not in modern-day Lithuania but rather in modern-day Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. While some Lithuanian-speakers did convert into Orthodoxy (mainly those who migrated to Orthodox-majority lands), most of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Orthodox population were Slavic-speakers. See “Grand Duchy of Lithuania” section of True Lithuania website: http://www.truelithuania.com/grand-duchy-of-lithuania-until-1569-258 .

      While it is true that entire Belarus was populated by Balts (arguably, proto-Lithuanians) at one time in history, this was actually in the Iron Age, 1st millennium AD. At the time the whole area was Pagan. Slavicization actually came to these Eastern Baltic lands either before Christianization or approximately at the same time.

      I will underline again, that what I write here is about lands that are no longer part of Lithuania. Few of these Medieval Orthodox Slavs ever lived in the lands of modern-day Lithuania. The only place with a significant population of Orthodox people there was Vilnius city because it was the capital and thus a location where people from all over the Grand Duchy came to. Vilnius indeed has a few Medieval Orthodox churches.

      Elsewhere in modern-day Lithuania however, the Orthodox populations first came as Russian settlers in the 19th century (under the Russian rule, see the article here: http://www.truelithuania.com/the-rule-of-russian-empire-in-lithuania-1795-1918-254 ). And the Russian Orthodox churches there all date to 19th or 20th centuries. The church was thus expanded as a Russian church by the Russian government, and even the older parishes of Vilnius became predominantly Russian. Therefore, what is written here is of little significance now, as currently the Orthodox church in Lithuania is overwhelmingly Russian (there is a just a single small non-Russian parish in the entire Lithuania; it uses the Lithuanian language and is mainly aimed at the converts or offspring of mixed families who are Russian Orthodox, yet speak Lithuanian better than Russian).

      There is also one Ukrainian-speaking church in Vilnius, but it is Eastern Rite Catholic (Uniate) rather than Russian Orthodox. See article on them here: http://www.truelithuania.com/eastern-rite-catholicism-uniate-christianity-490

  4. All you say is about people being Christian – meaning true faith, the Orthodoxy and later they have been “changed” by Papacy.
    For the last some 2 centuries, you wash your hands: the Orthodoxes are not Lithuanian… the Orthodoxes are far in East… the Orthodoxes are not talking and praying in Lithuanuan… the Lithuanians are not having a Lithuanian Orthodoxy actually…
    Is sad – leaving the Truth for the commercial and financial advantages of the materialistic “world” is not going to make people happier, is like turning the back to the parents saying you’re smart and they’re not.

    • In Lithuania, the situation is indeed like that: most Lithuanians are Roman Catholic and very few are Orthodoxes. On the other hand, most of the Lithuania’s Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians are Orthodox.

      There is now a single Orthodox church in the entire Lithuania where the mass is held in Lithuanian (Paraskeviya church in Vilnius). It was established some 10 years ago. Before that, there was no Lithuanian Orthodox mass at all and even no translation of the Orthodox liturgy into Lithuanian. I participated in the Lithuanian Orthodox mass at that church myself and there were just ~20 people on Sunday.

      It is just that Lithuanian religious tradition was different, while the Orthodox tradition was brought in by the ethnic minorities who moved into the Lithuanian cities. The fact that, in the 19th century, there was a Russian Imperial attempt to forcibly convert Lithuanians into Orthodoxy did not help Orthodoxy tow in the Lithuanian hearts either: while many Orthodox churches were built, to the locals Orthodoxy became synonymous with a foreign oppression for a long time.

      That said, even without such past I don’t think many would convert in to Orthodoxy. Religious conversion is difficult to achieve. The nations stay in the same faith for centuries or millennia. Just like the Romanians will not convert to Catholicism or Islam, so the Lithuanians would be unlikely to convert into Orthodoxy or any other faith regardless of a historical situation.

  5. http://ib.frath.net/w/Lithuanian_Orthodox_Church

    “Lithuanian Orthodox Church was fully established by 1924.”
    “Lithuanian Orthodox Church was declared the only legal Orthodox church in Lithuania.
    It received recognition from Patriarch of Constantinopole during his quarel with the Snorist Russian Patriarch.”
    “As Lithuania was occupied by Russia in the Second Great War, the Lithuanian Orthodox Church was banned and all its members forcibly converted to the Russian Orthodox faith. After the War the Church was re-established again in the RTC. ”
    “… Lithuanian Orthodox Church therefore lost many adherents.
    It relinquished its eastern eparchies (which were no longer part of Lithuania) and instead attempted to cover whole RTC by establishing eparchy of Warsina covering whole Veneda (and from 1970s officially whole western Europe as well, although there were few adherents there at the time).
    It also was no longer monolingual Lithuanian as mass was celebrated in Belarussian, Ukrainian and Vened as well (but Old Church Slavonic mass was never reintroduced). ”
    “In 1993 the Russian Patriarch recognised the Lithuanian Orthodox Church finally (although he continued to enjoy the right to have Russian Orthodox eparchies in Lithuania) and in 1995 Eparchy of the East was established in Minsk for Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

    Structure
    Lithuanian Orthodox Church is led by Patriarch of Vilnius and is partitioned into eparchies.

    Currently the Lithuanian Orthodox Church has the following eparchies:
    • Eparchy of Vilnius (established in 1924)
    • Eparchy of Kūvalas (established in 1926)
    • Eparchy of Gardinas (established in 1924)
    • Eparchy of Africa (established in 1936 as eparchy of Naujasis Vilnius, since 1940 operating as unrecognised Pakštuvan Orthodox Church, in 1942 moved to Salisbury (Rhodesia) and rejoined the Lithuanian Orthodox Church, renamed to the current name in 1952)
    • Eparchy of Warsina (established in 1954)
    • Eparchy of America (established in 1978 in Tejas)
    • Eparchy of the East (established in 1995 in Minsk, but not considered to be anyhow related to the interwar Eparchy of Miniškis) …”
    It seems there IS a Lithuanian Orthodox Church and IS used the Lithuanian language.

  6. Yes, is fictional.
    Fictional as well is to pretend that Orthodoxy is something related to Eastern people, especially Russian and in Lithuania is nobody left in the True Christianity.
    You know that Papacy is an ideology to follow the head – the Pope, not the Lord, Jesus Christ.
    Therefore, speaking of “religion”, so-called “Catholicism” is idolatry due to the denial of the original teaching, due to rejection of the Tradition, due to the change the man made to replace the revelations.
    I strongly believe there are people in Lithuania with Christian faith – only the Orthodoxy – and not just Christian cultural, spiritual “movement”.
    I am not talking about people of different ethnicity…..
    The people of the land used to be Christian, therefore Orthodox and were directed to switch from Jesus to the Pope by the rulers, too selfish and arrogant to realyy love and care of the people.
    Thank you to let my message being posted!

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  8. I am lithuanian, orthodox convert.
    Believe me, there’s no other place called home like orthodox christianity.
    Indeed it’s truth, most of Lithuanians are r.catholics and they might hate convert.
    Plus, here’s no many church for orthodox christians, so better for a convert to live in the any other orthodox christian country.

  9. Ill Bethisad appears not to have any facts which are true:
    1. Most Lithuanians are pagan
    2. Lithuania is part of a tweed country
    3. Florida had a war in 2004

  10. Hi sir my name is patrass Masih am a Christian am from Pakistan Islamabad I need your help for my family sir can I change my profile to orthopedic please I want change my fath I like orthopedic my friend tell me in Russian so please help me sir in Jesus Christ name please


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