Catholicism and Language Diversity in late Habsburg Empire

Conference about Catholicism and Language Diversity in Austria-Hungary with a special focus on spaces, is it seminars, parishes, associations and congregations, where people of different languages participated, and tactics and strategies to have more than one language represented in daily life interactions. It is planned to publish some of the papers as a thematic issue in the scopus ranked peer reviewed open access journal Acta Histriae (https://zdjp.si/en/poslanstvo/)

Catholicism and Language Diversity in late Habsburg Empire

I have recently been granted an FWF-project entitled "Language Diversity and Dynamic Interdependencies between Roman Catholic Church Dioceses and Dualist Austrian State Institutions" (https://www.fwf.ac.at/forschungsradar/10.55776/PAT1679824) which is affiliated with the Department of Biblical Studies and Historical Theology at University of Innsbruck. Together with my project researcher, Jan Bernot, and in cooperation with Stefan Heid, Roman Institute of the Görres-Society, and Andreas Gottsmann from the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome we are organizing a conference about how daily life was organised when more than one language was spoken in Roman Catholic spheres located in Austria-Hungary.

Programm

Thursday, 29 January 2026

16.00-16.30: Welcome by the Organizers & Presentation of the co-funding research project

Language Diversity and Dynamic Interdependencies between Roman Catholic Church Dioceses and Dualist Austrian State Institutions
Tamara Scheer, University of Innsbruck/University of Vienna

16.30-18.00: Roman-Catholic Church & Funding

Polyglot Petitions. Multilingual supplications to ecclesiastical institutions in the 19th century Marion Averbeck-Dotter, Collegium Carolinum Munich/DHI Rome

The Greek-Oriental Religious Fund of Bucovina 1786-1918 (1948). An institution as a driver of socio-economic integration and creator of regional identity
Kurt Scharr, University of Innsbruck

Moderation: Tamara Scheer

Friday, 30 January 2026

9.30-13.00: Morning Panel (with an intermediate coffee break)

Parish Life and Pastoral Care

Managing Multilingual Roman Catholic Parishes in late Habsburg Rural Carniola
Jan Bernot, University of Innsbruck

Difficulties of pastoral care in a bilingual diocese: An attempted solution on the example of the Archdiocese of Olomouc under Archbishop Theodor Kohn
Jitka Jonová, Palacký University Olomouc)

Beyond national lenses: language prestige in the Sathmar Swabian Roman-Catholic communities during the early 20th century
Răzvan Roșu Vlach, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Linguistic Diversity in the Structure of Catholic Church Life: The Case of Subotica, 1905–1914
Richárd Morvai Rácz, Károli Gáspár Center for Protestant Studies, Subotica

Moderation: Andreas Gottsmann

15.00-18.30: Afternoon Panel (with intermediate coffee break)

Catholic Institutions & Language Diversity

Language Diversity on the Banks of the River Vrbas: The Trappist Monastery in Banja Luka
Çiğdem Dumanlı, Hacettepe University Ankara

Brno and Iglau as Case Studies of Diocesan Mediation in Czech-German Catholic Relations Petra Lexová Černá, Masaryk University Brno/Diocesan Museum Brno

Language Management in the Leopoldine-Society, an Austrian International Missionary Society, 1829-1914
Jonathan Singerton, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

St. Demetrius Girls' Lyceum in Zadar: A Bilingual School in a Tense Environment
Ante Bralić & Zdenko Dundović, University of Zadar

Moderation: Jan Bernot