The Different Catholic Churches Explained (And Why There Are 24 Of Them)

When one hears the phrase Catholic Church, the immediate association is with the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican, the pope, and the city of Rome. But occasionally one sees a church that is labeled as "Maronite," "Ukrainian Catholic," or something similar. Due to the aesthetics or national associations, people might even assume they are simply mislabeled Orthodox churches.

However, they are Catholic just as much as the Roman Catholic Church and the pope are Catholic. This is because, in reality, the Catholic Church is one large umbrella organization consisting of 24 different churches — the Roman church and 23 other "sue iuris" churches. Per Ascension Press, these 23 others are churches that are governed separately in their own right but owe allegiance to Rome. 

These churches all have their own traditions, history, culture, language, and reasons for existing. Many of them are former Orthodox churches that rejoined Rome, while others were simply separated by distance and time. Here are the 24 different Catholic churches explained.

Of the 24 different Catholic Churches, about 13 of them (depending on who is counting) fall under the title "Greek" per the Diocese of St. Petersburg. According to the Jesuit Catholics and Cultures, the name refers to the fact that the rite of these churches, often called "Byzantine," developed in Constantinople – the capital of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire. It has nothing to do with Greek ethnicity. Today, there are multiple Greek Catholic churches organized along national lines mostly in Eastern Europe, the largest of which is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

The Greek Catholics are distinguished by one major feature: they are all former Orthodox Churches. Using the UGCC as an example, the church in Ukraine remained with Constantinople following the Great Schism of 1054. When Western Ukraine came under Polish rule, however, a handful of Orthodox bishops signed the Union of Brest, which placed them under papal authority but allowed them to keep their own catechism, the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, and all the use of their own liturgical languages.

Today, each Greek Catholic Church has its own leader, answerable to Pope Francis. The most famous is UGCC head Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk. Some churches have more power and influence than others mostly based on size, with the UGCC and its Romanian counterpart at the top. Then there are the Ruthenian and Slovak churches, and nine other smaller ones scattered throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans, per the Diocese of St. Petersburg.

The Aramaic-speaking Lebanese Maronite Church traces its ancestry to Jesus Christ's visit to Tyre and Sidon, per St. Sharbel's Church. These pagan strongholds were not fully evangelized until one St. Maron came along to finish the job in the 4th century AD. While Syrian Christians mostly repudiated the 451 Council of Chalcedon, St. Maron's followers did not. They remained loyal to Rome, and were pejoratively dubbed "Maronites."

Living in the isolated mountains of Lebanon at a time when communication wasn't exactly instant, the Latin West forgot the Maronites until Latin crusaders encountered them, in the 12th century, per CNEWA. Upon contact, however, the Maronites eagerly signed an agreement of formal unity with Rome in 1182 and even sent Patriarch Jeremias II Al-Amshitti as a representative to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

Today, Maronites are synonymous with Lebanon, which was founded as a Maronite oasis in the Middle East, forming the majority of Lebanon's population in 1932, per The Nation. Following the 1974 Civil War and mass Christian emigration, Maronites, and Christians in general, are less than 30% of the Lebanese population, per Aleteia, while Muslims have surged to over 40%. In fact, per Catholics and Cultures, most Maronites today live in the Lebanese diaspora scattered around the world.

As a result of centuries of Islamic rule, most Maronites speak Arabic, per the Church's Canadian website. Certain parts of the liturgy are still in Aramaic, while Arabic or another local language is used for the rest.

The Syro-Malabar Church of Western India traces its origins back to St. Thomas the Apostle and was originally part of the old Church of the East, per its own website. In 1498, these Christians came into contact with Portuguese explorers, who under the impression that these Indian Christians were heretics, forced Latinization upon them over the course of the 16th century. Following the death of the last Church of the East bishop in 1597, the 1599 Synod of Diamper officially brought the Syro-Malabar Christians under Portuguese Catholic rule.

Of course, there were problems. While the Syro-Malabar Christians chafed under Portuguese rule, whose justifications were more often more political and economic than religious. When some dissidents with Church of the East sympathies defied the Catholic Church by appointing their own bishop at an event called the Coonan Cross Oath, the papacy stepped in to correct the abuses. Rome yanked authority from the Portuguese and placed India under native Catholic bishops who knew their people and customs. The liturgy, however, had been so heavily Latinized that according to CNEWA, it was virtually indistinguishable from the Latin Rite at first glance.

Tensions between Latin and Syriac traditions have resulted in a series of "mass wars" among the faithful. According to Pillar Catholic, a riot broke out in one diocese over a dispute as to how much of the liturgy should be based on the Roman Rite and how much on the Syriac Rite. Today, the Syro-Malabar liturgy is a mix of both and counts faithful across India and in the diaspora.

The Coptic Church of Alexandria in Egypt arose from the schism over theological disagreements following the 451 Council of Chalcedon. According to the Church of St. Mark and St. George, Copts argue that their position was deliberately distorted for political purposes. Regardless, the Alexandrian Church became independent with Coptic (a descendant of Ancient Egyptian) as its liturgical language.

Despite the split, the Catholic Church never forgot about the Copts, who eventually came under Muslim rule. A 1442 attempt at unity failed due to a lack of support in Egypt, per CNEWA, as did later dialogue between Coptic priests and Catholic missionaries. In 1700, their union seemed impossible.

Instead, the Coptic Catholic Church was born semi-accidentally. In 1741, a Coptic bishop named Anba Athanasius converted to Catholicism and was appointed "Vicar Apostolic" for approximately 2,000 Egyptian Catholics – most of whom were not in Egypt but in Jerusalem. Funnily enough, Anba returned to the Coptic Orthodox Church, so the enterprise didn't really go anywhere until 1824, when the papacy officially created a Coptic Catholic Church as a sui iuris body – except that it only existed on paper and no one actually asked for it.

Only in 1899, did the church receive a leader – Patriarch Cyril II Makarios. But he was then forced to resign over a scandal in 1908, leaving the patriarchate empty until 1947. Unsurprisingly, this slow start has meant that the Coptic Catholic Church remains a tiny minority with 162,000 adherents, dwarfed by its Orthodox counterpart of 15 million in Egypt alone.

Armenia holds the title of being the first country ever to convert to Christianity under King Tiridates III in 301 AD, per the Armenian Apostolic Church. However, theological disagreements led the church to follow the Coptic Church into schism following the 451 Council of Chalcedon, per the Vatican website. The split did not stop Rome from attempting reunification, however, during the Crusades and later during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, per Catholics and Cultures. Missionaries had moderate success, establishing a Catholic diocese in Nakhchivan (today in Azerbaijan) around 1400 with some local converts. 

Catholicism soon butted heads with the Armenian Apostolic Church, which considered itself the only Armenian religious institution under the slogan of "one Church for the entire nation." In fact, because of the hostility, the Armenian Catholic Church (ACC) was not created in Armenia, but among the diaspora in Lebanon in 1742.

During the 1915 Armenian Genocide, the ACC lost every single parish within the Ottoman Empire outside Istanbul along with almost all of its priests and a large portion of its faithful. Among them is Ignatius Maolyan, who according to the Vatican was martyred after refusing to convert to Islam. After the genocide, Armenia fell under the Soviets, who closed the remaining Catholic churches and killed or exiled surviving clergy. Only a few churches among Armenians in Georgia survived.

Today, there are efforts to revitalize the church, but it suffers from a lack of clergy and migration of its faithful to large cities where Orthodoxy and the Armenian Apostolic Church reign supreme.