WASHINGTON, D.C. – Bishop Borys Gudziak, one of the best-known members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), seen by many as the brains behind the successful Catholic University in Lviv, has been appointed to his church’s top position in the United States.
The Vatican announced on Feb. 18 that the Pope had appointed Bishop Gudziak as Metropolitan and Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia. The city, in the state of Pennsylvania, has one of the oldest and largest Ukrainian communities in the United States.
As Metropolitan, he will be the UGCC’s highest-ranking priest in the country.
Pope Francis made the appointment at the recommendation of the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC, which met last September in Lviv.
For the last six years, Bishop Gudziak has headed the Eparchy of St. Volodymyr in Paris. He was responsible for the Ukrainian Catholic faithful not only in France, but in Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
Before taking up his spiritual duties in Paris, Bishop Gudziak was the founder and rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv.
He has been recognized not only for his formidable spirituality and intellect, but also for his diplomatic and networking skills, which enabled him to obtain support and financial donations for the university’s founding in 2002, and its subsequent rapid development.
The UCU is now recognized as a center of intellectual excellence whose ideas and influence have spread throughout Ukraine and even beyond.
Bishop Gudziak was born in the United States in 1960 to Ukrainian refugee parents who fled from the communists during World War II.
In an interview with a Church publication he said that his appointment had provoked deep thoughts and gratitude to God.
“I am grateful to the Holy Father, Pope Francis, to the Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav and to the Synod for their confidence and blessing. I am at peace. As a Christian and priest, I try to accept God’s will as expressed by the Church, in this case neither seeking nor resisting this nomination,” said the bishop.
Returning home
He said that he would miss “the energy and life of the Paris Eparchy” but his new job meant a return to the land of his birth.
“At the same time, the nomination is a homecoming,” said Bishop Gudziak. “My Ukrainian-American family and the Church in the United States gave me life in body and spirit. I was born in Syracuse, New York. There, at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church on Tompkins Street, I was washed in the waters of Baptism. There God called me to the priesthood.”
“Having lived 30 years of my adult life in Europe, I look forward to the adventure of getting to know the United States and its church in a new way,” said the bishop.
He acknowledged that, as in other parts of the world, the Catholic Church, of which the UGCC is an integral part, faced many grave challenges caused by sexual abuse scandals and because many questioned their own faith.
He said that during his frequent visits to his sick mother, who died in Syracuse last summer, he had been struck by the “deepening divisions in American society, the superficiality of moral discourse, social media, and the increasing virtuality of interpersonal communication.”
But Bishop Guziak said that he was confident the wounds within the church and society could be healed. He said that as a church historian and pastor, he was inspired by how the Ukrainian Catholic Church had overcome persecution, execution and near obliteration by communist authorities and had revived as a vibrant spiritual force in Ukraine.
He will be installed as the seventh Metropolitan-Archbishop for the Archeparchy of Philadelphia on June 4, at the city’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception by the head of the UGCC, Patriarch Sviatoslav.
In a video message to the faithful in America, Bishop Gudziak said: “I thank God for the call and the Church for its confidence and I’m glad to be coming home. I’ve been at home in Ukraine and in the Paris Eparchy and many countries for 30 years but I was born in America………up Route 81 from Philadelphia.”
.Bishop Hlib Lonchyna from London, Britain, will now take charge of the Paris Eparchy.
