VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI has named a Ukrainian Catholic priest who was born in Syracuse, N.Y., to be the bishop for Ukrainian Catholics in France.
Father Borys Gudziak, 51, rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, has lived and worked mainly in Ukraine since completing his doctorate in Slavic history at Harvard in 1992.
The Vatican announced July 21 that the pope had named him a bishop and appointed him apostolic exarch for Byzantine-rite Ukrainians in France. According to Vatican statistics, he will be responsible for the pastoral care of about 25,000 Ukrainian Catholics, who are ministered to by 16 priests, five religious women and a permanent deacon.
Bishop-designate Gudziak was born Nov. 24, 1960, to parents who emigrated from Ukraine. He graduated from Syracuse University in 1980 and moved to Rome to study at Holy Sofia College and the Pontifical Urbanian University, earning a degree in theology. He studied at Harvard from 1983 to 1992, and then moved to Ukraine where he was the founding director of the Institute of Church History and coordinator of an oral history project to collect the stories of those who survived and maintained their faith under communist repression of the church.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1998 and was named rector of the Lviv Theological Academy in 2000. The academy grew into the Ukrainian Catholic University in 2002 and he was named rector.
He serves as a consultant to the Vatican Congregation for Eastern Churches.