KRIZEVCI (CRISTO), DIOCESE of. – Croatian town near Zagreb, seat of the diocese of the same name for Catholics of the Byzantine-Slavonic rite (Greek Catholics), suffragan to Zagreb, erected on 17 June 1777: Crisiensis or Crisiensis Ruthenorum. From the sixteenth century onward, the faithful of the dissident Serbian patriarchate of Peć, largely Slavicized Vlachs, began fleeing from the Turkish Empire into Croatian territory. Intermingled with the Catholics, they came under their influence. In 1611 their bishop Simeone Vretanja, residing in the monastery of Marča not far from Zagreb, submitted to the Holy See and until his death (1630) propagated union among the Vlachs of Croatia, Slavonia, and Carniola (Uskoks).
He and his successors were only titular bishops and apostolic vicars, and the Latin bishops of Zagreb often regarded them as their vicars for the faithful of the Eastern rite. Under the distinguished bishop Paolo Zorčić (1671–85), the Croatian Vlachs from the Adriatic to the Danube were either already united or close to becoming so. Zorčić founded a seminary in Zagreb (1680), which still exists. This union, however, was almost completely destroyed by the Serbian patriarch Arsenije III Crnojević, who took refuge with a large mass of his faithful in Hungarian and Croatian territory after the withdrawal of the Habsburg imperial army from the Balkans in 1690. Arsenije (d. 1706) and his successors, the archbishop-metropolitans of Karlovci, gradually reduced the number of the united to a minimum. In 1739 the very centre of the unionist movement, the monastery of Marča, was burned.
Only in 1777, during the episcopate of Basilio Božičković (1759–85), was a diocese of full canonical status erected at K. for the united who had remained faithful. The Ruthenian settlers of southern Hungary, originating from Subcarpathian Russia (Rusini), were also placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop of K. After the First World War (1918), the jurisdiction of the bishop of K. was extended to all Catholics of the Byzantine rite in Yugoslavia (Ukrainian emigrants in Bosnia and Slavonia, Macedonians, and two Romanian parishes in the Banat). Under the zealous bishop Dionisio Njaradi (1914–40), Catholic life was strengthened in every sphere, so as to withstand victoriously the attacks of the revived Serbian Orthodox patriarchate. The diocese suffered extremely serious damage during the Second World War and under the Communist regime. In addition to several priests and many of the faithful, the learned bishop himself, Monsignor Giovanni Šimrak (1942–46), became a victim of the persecution.
In 1939 the diocese had approximately 50,000 faithful, 11 deaneries, 49 parishes, 70 priests (2 in the United States of America), 3 Basilian religious, and 41 women religious in 7 houses.