Sts. Cyril & Methodius

Brothers from Thessalonica fluent in Slavic, sent in 863 to evangelize Great Moravia. Cyril invented the Glagolitic alphabet — ancestor of the Cyrillic that bears his name — to translate Scripture and the liturgy into Old Church Slavonic. Together they laid the cultural and religious foundations of the Slavic peoples and were named co-patrons of Europe by John Paul II in 1980.

Their mission met fierce resistance from Frankish clergy who insisted that only Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were fit for worship. The brothers traveled to Rome, where Pope Adrian II approved the Slavonic liturgy and ordained Methodius a bishop. Cyril, already gravely ill, took monastic vows and died in Rome in 869; Methodius carried on alone for another sixteen years under constant pressure.

The legacy of Cyril and Methodius endures in every nation that writes in Cyrillic and in every Eastern church that worships in a Slavic tongue. They proved that the Gospel does not belong to any one culture but must be allowed to take root in the language and soul of each people it reaches.