Ukrainian Catholic Church in US installs new leader

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — An Eastern Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania has installed a new leader.

The Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia has named the Rev. Borys Gudziak as the metropolitan archbishop, which makes him the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States.

Gudziak is a 58-year-old native of Syracuse, New York. He succeeds Stefan Soroka, who resigned for health reasons last year.

Gudziak will serve as spiritual leader of the national Ukrainian Catholic Church's four regional dioceses, based in Chicago; Parma, Ohio; Stamford; Connecticut; and Philadelphia.

In 1992, following the reemergence of the Ukrainian Catholic Church from decades of Soviet oppression, Gudziak founded an academy in Lviv, Ukraine, to chronicle that era.

He also helped revive the theological training that disappeared when the faith was forced underground in the mid-1940s.