The 44th Annual Sts. Cyril Methodius Slavic Heritage Festival will be held on Sunday, Sept. 30, 2007, at the SPJST Lodge 88 Chandelier Ball Room located at 14th and Beal streets in Houston. It will be sponsored by local Croatian, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian groups.

The festival will begin with the Mass at 10 a.m. in the meeting room behind the lodge's main hall.  After the Mass, ethnic food will be available in the hall.  Starting at 1 p.m., there will be Croatian, Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, and Slovene singing and dancing. Kovanda's Czech Band will also feature prominently in the entertainment.

This celebration is one of the oldest ethnic festivals in Houston. It was first held in 1963 to celebrate the 1100th aniversary of the evangelization of the Slavic peoples by two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius. The late Bishop John L. Morkovsky, Bishop of the Diocese of Galveston-Housotn, worked with Rev. Dmytro Blazejovskyj, Pastor of Pokrova Ukrainian Catholic Church, and with Maurice Hafernik, a Houstonian of Czech descent, to organize the celebration.  Under Haferniks's leadership, the celebration became an annual event.

The festival commemorates the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius who brought Christianity to the Slavic tribes in the late 800's.  They arrived in what was then known as the Great Moravia in about 863 A.D. and brought with them 50 disciples from Byzantium. The saints developed an alphabet, later know as the Cyrilic alphabet, and they translated the Bible, the liturgy, and some prayers into the vernacular of their Slavic converts.  Christianity and the workable alphabet gave rise to literature and civilization that advanced the general welfare of the Slavic peoples in all areas of human endeavor. The prayers and forms of worship developed by Sts. Cyril and Methodius came to be know as the Old Church Slavonic liturgy, and it is still celebrated in a few remote areas of Slavic countries including the Czech Republic.

For more information about the festival, call (281) 394-2133.