The clergy of the cathedral and the hierarchs of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
Borys Gudziak, born in 1960 in Syracuse, New York to Ukrainian immigrant parents, studied philosophy and biology at Syracuse University, theology in Rome, and history at Harvard, where he received his doctorate in 1992. Ordained a priest in 1998 and a bishop in 2012, he served the Ukrainian Catholic Church in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Switzerland before being appointed Metropolitan and Archbishop of Philadelphia in February 2019. He was enthroned at this cathedral on June 4, 2019.
A historian of the Kyivan Church, he founded the Institute of Church History in Lviv, served as rector and later president of the Ukrainian Catholic University, and heads the Department of External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. He chairs the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.
Full biography →Very Rev. Fr. Roman Pitula served as Rector from August 16, 2016. A native of Stryj in the Lviv region of Ukraine, he studied at Ivano-Frankivsk Spiritual Theological University and St. Basil's Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. Ordained a priest in 1998, he ministered in parishes in Ukraine before coming to Philadelphia in 2002 at the invitation of Archbishop Soroka, serving parishes in Trenton NJ, Hillsborough NJ, New Brunswick NJ, Frackville PA, and Maizeville PA.
He followed Very Rev. Joseph Szupa (2015–2016), who fell asleep in the Lord moments after celebrating Sunday Liturgy in the cathedral, and Rev. Ivan Demkiv (2003–2015).
The parish clergy today are Msgr. Peter Waslo, Fr. John Mikitish, and Fr. Volodymyr Radko.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky guided the Church through two world wars and seven changes of regime. Patron of artists and pioneer of ecumenism, he harbored hundreds of Jews during the Nazi occupation and died November 1, 1944; his beatification process is well advanced.
Josyf Slipyj, Major Archbishop, Patriarch and Cardinal, spent eighteen years in Stalinist prisons and Siberian exile before release in 1963. He led the Church in exile, founded the Ukrainian Catholic University, and built St. Sophia Cathedral in Rome.
Archbishop Volodymyr Sterniuk, secretly ordained bishop, led the underground Church in Ukraine from a one-room communal flat through the persecutions of the Brezhnev years to freedom.
Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, Major Archbishop and Cardinal, once Ukrainian Archbishop of Philadelphia, returned home to Lviv on March 30, 1991 and led the renewal of the Church in free Ukraine.
Lubomyr Husar, Major Archbishop and Cardinal, led the Church into the twenty-first century and became its first patriarch after the title was granted in 2005.
Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church — who visited this cathedral as His Beatitude in 2019 for Pentecost.
Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral