Introduced Modern Church Practices in Lithuania

Audrys Juozas Cardinal Backis

Function: Archbishop of Vilnius, Lithuania

Title: Cardinal Priest of Natività di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo a Via Gallia

Birthdate: Feb 01, 1937	Country: Lithuania

Elevated: Feb 21, 2001	More information: www.catholic-hierarchy.org

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Introduced Modern Church Practices in Lithuania
Oct 18, 2004
Born on February 1, 1937, the son of a diplomat in Kaunas, Audrys Juozas Backis remained with his family in France after Lithuania’s 1940 Soviet annexation. He trained for the priesthood at St. Sulpice Seminary outside Paris.

(Inside the Vatican) After studies at Rome’s Gregorian University, he was ordained in 1961, enrolling at the Vatican’s diplomatic school after a stint among Lithuanian Catholics in the United States. Between 1964 and 1973, he served at nunciatures in the Philippines, Costa Rica, Turkey and Nigeria, before returning to the Vatican to work with peace, disarmament and international organizations. Named an archbishop in 1988, he was appointed nuncio to the Netherlands, where he drafted a diplomatic convention signed by the Vatican and Lithuania after its September 1991 independence. Since his March 1992 installation, Backis has served two terms as Lithuanian bishops’ conference president and is a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

Backis introduced modern church practices in Lithuania, following 50 years of communist oppression. Being Western-trained, he lacked personal experience of the rigors and sufferings of communist-era church life, and some priests objected to the re-imposition of order and discipline after decades without an active church hierarchy. Today, though, the achievements of Backis are generally acknowledged in Lithuania, where Catholics traditionally comprise 80 percent of a population of 3.7 million.

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