HAJDÚDOROG. - A large village in the northeast of the Hungarian plain, where in 1873 the Ruthenian bishop of Mukachevo established an episcopal vicariate for that Ruthenian population that had come down there from Subcarpathia and become Magyarized. The part of the Eastern liturgy sung by the people had been translated into Hungarian, and in 1900 a request was even made to Leo XIII to be able to adopt Hungarian as the liturgical language. In 1912, at the personal request of Franz Joseph to Pius X, H. was erected as a diocese, the only Hungarian diocese of the Byzantine rite, with parishes detached not only from the Ruthenian dioceses of Prjasev (8) and Mukachevo (70), but also (85) from three Romanian dioceses (Romanian-Byzantine rite) of Transylvania, still Hungarian.
The assignment of 72,000 Romanian faithful to a Magyar diocese produced an enormous commotion in Transylvania and in Romania, and the cry of Los von Rom! was even heard. The moderating attitude of politicians such as Al Cuza and Nicolae Iorga was noted, however. The commotion subsided during the war.
In 1919 all the Romanian parishes returned to their own dioceses. The intended use of Greek in the liturgy was not implemented. In the 1918 Annuario the faithful numbered 217,640; in 1932 (and 1926: Janin), they were 142,000, with 106 priests.
Bibliography2 works
Federico Tailliez