Chair of Ukrainian Church Studies Established at Catholic University of America

On Wednesday, September 28, the inauguration of the Chair of Ukrainian Church Studies and the Bishop Basil H. Losten Endowed Professor was held at the Catholic University of America (CUA).

The invocation at the beginning of the ceremony was led by Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, Ukrainian Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia. After the introductory remarks by the Dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies, Rev. Mark Morozowich, the newly created Center and Chair were accepted by Peter Kilpatrick, President of the CUA, and Aaron Dominguez, Provost. Before Rev. Peter Galadza, the holder of the newly created chair was presented, Bishop Basil H. Losten, the sponsor of the Center of Ukrainian Church Studies, shared his memories of being a student at Catholic University with faculty and guests gathered at the ceremony.

Afterwards, the Chair of the Ukrainian Church Studies offered the three main areas of study at the center: the continued work of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Study Group of Kyivan Church; the role of the presbytera(the wife of a priest) in the underground Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC); and the catechism of UGCC “Christ our Pascha”, especially its moral theology.

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The Ukrainian Church Studies Center is part of the Institute for the Study of Eastern Christianity of the School of Theology and Religious Studies of the Catholic University of America.

The Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Study Group of Kyivan Church was a group of theologians of the Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox of the Ecumenical Patriarchate that was active in the beginning of the 1990s, whose main work was to study the possibility of the communion of the Ukrainian Catholic Church with the Patriarch of Constantinople without interrupting communion with Rome.