Antonín Cyril Stojan (1851–1923) and the Union Congresses of Velehrad: New Documents from the Vatican Archives for a Better Understanding of His Legacy

On the occasion of the first centenary of the death of Antonin Cyril Stojan, Archbishop of Olomouc from 1921 to 1923, the article provides an original interpretation of some relevant aspects of his spiritual legacy. In analysing a number of documents kept in the Vatican Apostolic Archives (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano) and in the Archive of the Congregation for Oriental Churches (Archivio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali), the author outlines the peculiarity of Stojan’s contribution to the quest for unity among Christians. The organization of the seven Union Congresses of Velehrad, held from 1907 up to 1936, based on Stojan’s intuition, took place in a very difficult political and social context, including the First World War. Stojan showed how hope for a future good is not only linked to the present external conditions: it can be concretely cultivated in the forms granted by the age in which one lives. For this reason, even after his death, during the pontificate of Pius XI, the cycles of Congresses and moments of prayer and study of the Eastern Churches of the Byzantine liturgical tradition that Stojan had begun, continued. Regarding this original way of approaching interconfessional relations, some significant documents kept in the aforementioned Archives can shed light on two relevant dimensions of these cycles of Congresses, which remain faithful to the Catholic Church and rejecting proselytism as a means of spreading Catholicism.