Pope names metropolitan archbishop

Staff report

PITTSBURGH

Pope Benedict XVI officially appointed Most Rev. William C. Skurla as metropolitan archbishop of the Byzantine Archeparchy of Pittsburgh. He will be enthroned April 18 in Pittsburgh.

The Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh is the only self-governing Eastern Catholic Church in the United States; it is directly under the authority of the pope. It stretches from Erie, Pa., to Texas and has 58,000 parishioners and 65 priests in 78 parishes.

Ohio parishes in the archeparchy are Infant Jesus of Prague Church in Boardman; St. Michael Byzantine Catholic Church Church in Campbell; St. Michael Byzantine Catholic in Newton Falls; Sts. Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church in Warren; St. George, St. Mary and St. Nicholas Byzantine Catholic churches in Youngstown; and in Pennsylvania, St. Michael Byzantine Catholic Church in Hermitage.

Archbishop-elect Skurla, 55, is the son of the late John and Mavis Skurla and born in Duluth, Minn. He attended Catholic and public elementary schools and graduated in 1974 from Chisholm High School, Chisholm, Minn.

He attended Deerfield Academy post-graduate program in Deerfield, Mass. He attended Columbia University in New York City, graduating with a concentration in philosophy in 1981. Archbishop-elect Skurla studied at Mary Immaculate Seminary in Northampton, Pa., where he received a master’s of divinity in 1986 and a master’s of theology in 1987.

He entered the Byzantine Franciscan community in Sybertsville, Pa., in 1981 and was solemnly professed in 1985. Bishop Michael Dudick ordained him to the diaconate in 1986 and to the priesthood in 1987 at St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Freeland, Pa.

In 1996, having received and accepted his dispensation from solemn vows as a member of the Order of Friars Minor, he was incardinated into the Eparchy of Van Nuys, where he served as pastoral administrator at St. Melany Byzantine Catholic Church in Tucson, Ariz., from 1993 until 2002.

Archbishop-elect Skurla was ordained to the Episcopacy and enthroned as the third bishop of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Van Nuys on April 23, 2002, in Phoenix.

In December of 2007, he was appointed fourth bishop of the Eparchy of Passaic and was enthroned at St. Michael Cathedral, Passaic, N.J., on Jan. 29, 2008.

Archbishop-elect Skurla serves as the Episcopal chairperson of the Intereparchial Vocation Directors and Intereparchial Youth Commission for the Metropolia. He was a member of the Committee on the Laity with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and currently serves as a member of the USCCB administrative committee, priority and plans committee and national advisory committee.

Archbishop-elect Skurla succeeds Metropolitan Archbishop Basil M. Schott, who died in June 2010.