Until 1656 Ohrid was the archdiocese of the Catholic Church in the region of the Balkans. After that the bishop moved to Skopje. In 1924 the archdiocese was established in Belgrade.
In 1939 the Catholic Church bought a house in Ohrid from a Turkish family. One room was transformed into a chapel.
A priest and two sisters lived in Ohrid to serve the community. The sisters belonged to the congregations of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent De Paul, and where part of the Slovenian Province.
The current buildings of the church and Pastoral Centre were finished in the year 2000. The church was officially consecrated on the 28th of October 2007 by the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Vinko Puljić, at the occasion of the World Conference on Dialogue Among Religions and Civilizations in Ohrid.
The Patron saints of the church and Pastoral Centre are, as the name implies, Saint Cyril, Saint Methodius and Saint Benedict.
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Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4St. Cyril
(826-869)
Cyril was born Constantine in Thessalonica around 826, and changed his name only when he became a monk shortly before his death. He had six brothers and sisters, one of them St. Methodius (originally Michael). Their father was an officer in the Legion of Thessalonica and the two brothers spoke the Slavic dialect of Macedonia.
Cyril was 14 when his father died. He moved to Constantinople, where he studied philosophy at the Imperial University. Cyril was ordained priest and then was named librarian at Santa Sophia. Eventually he became a professor at the university. After a mission to the Arabs, he joined his brother, Methodius, who had retired to a monastery on Mount Olympus, in Bythnia.
In 860, they were both sent by Emperor Michael III as missionaries to the partly Christianized Khazars, and in 862 to Moravia, where the duke Rostislav had requested Slavonic-speaking priests. This mision was accepted with enthusiasm. In Moravia, Cyril invented the Glagolithic alphabet (which later produced Cyrillic). Both brothers translated into Slavonic both Biblical and liturgical texts and preached in the vernacular. For this reason they are regarded as the founders of the Slavonic literature.
Thanks to the two brothers, Greek clerical influence increased in Moravia, at the expense of the German clergy who had originally evangelized the country and settled there. Gradually, tension mounted between the two rival priesthoods. The situation was similar in Pannonia. At the end of 867, the rwo brothers left Moravia. They were received with honour in Rome. Cyril, who was seriously ill, took monastic orders and died soon afterwards; he was buried in San Clemente, in Rome.
St. Methodius
(c.815-885)
Methodius was named Archbishop of Pannonia and Moravia the year his brother died (869) and was made Papal Legate to the Slavs. Methodius returned to Pannonia, where he met with resistance from the German bishops. Condemned by a synod held at Regensburg, Methodius was exiled to Ellwangen for 2 years. Pope John VIII released him in 873, but had to forbid the Slavonic liturgy. Finally, however, although Latin was used in the liturgy, the Slav language was not disregarded. Tension between Methodius and the suffragans imposed by Rome was defused only on his death in 885. Methodius died in
at Velehrad in Czechia in the rank of Archbishop of Moravia.
St. Methodius is regarded as a pioneer of the use of he vernacular in the Liturgy and as a patron of ecumenism.
Pope John Paul II nominated SS. Cyril and Methodius as joint patrons of Europe together with St. Benedict.
Feast day: 11 May in the East; 14 February in the West.
Cyril and Methodius where the teachers of Saint Clemens of Ohrid and Saint Naum. Because of persecution these two saints fled Moravia and settled in Ohrid where they founded churches and schools. In most orthodox churches in Ohrid you will find the portraits of these four learned and Holy men.
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St. Benedict of Nursia (c.480-c.550)
was born into an aristocratic family in the Umbrian province of Nursia. Around 500 he retired to a cave in a place that was to become known as Sacro Speco near the Lake of Subiaco. In 529, Benedict founded the Abbey of Monte Cassino and composed his famous Rule, which has served ever since as a basis both for Benedictines and for western monastic life generally. Benedict was the spiritual forefather of all the western orders, and is called the Patriarch of western monasticism.
He is the patron of the Benedictine Order. and, since 1964, of Europe.