Archbishop of Philadelphia (Ukrainian)
Borys Gudziak was born in Syracuse, New York, on November 24, 1960. His parents, both Ukrainian Greek Catholics, had arrived in New York from the Lviv region in the early fifties. After completing his pre-university studies at the Christian Brothers Academy, he graduated from Syracuse University with a double major in philosophy and biology (1980). He entered the Saint Sophia College in Rome where, as a student of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Lviv, he attended the Pontifical Urban University. He earned a degree in theology in 1983. In 1992, he moved permanently to Lviv, where he founded the Institute of Church History (ICH) and served as its director until October 2002. In 1993, Cardinal Myroslav Ivan Lubachivsky, Major Archbishop of Lviv for Ukrainians, appointed him President of the Commission for the Renewal of the Lviv Theological Academy. From October 1994 to July 1995, he attended the Pontifical Oriental Institute, focusing in particular on the neo-patristic synthesis of the Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky. He served as Vice-Rector from 1995 and became Rector of the Theological Academy in 2000, subsequently becoming Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. He was ordained a priest on November 26, 1998, at St. George's Church, incardinating into the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Lviv. He is the author of over 50 studies on Church history, theological formation, and various topics of current cultural interest.