UOCUSA Nominates Next Metropolitan

An extraordinary council (собор) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA (UOCUSA) and the Diaspora has nominated Archbishop Antony (Scharba) of Hierapolis and the Eastern American Eparchy for election by the Holy Synod of the Constantinopolitan Orthodox Church as first hierarch of the UOCUSA. Axios! More here.

UOCUSA Announces Special Assembly to Elect Metropolitan

Archbishop Anthony (Scherba) of Hierapolis, locum tenens of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and the Diaspora (UOCUSA), has announced that the UOCUSA will hold a special assembly (собор) of the Church this coming October to elect a successor to its recently reposed first hierarch, Metropolitan Constantine (Buggan) of Irinoupolis. More here. H/t to Byzantine Texas.

In Memoriam: Metropolitan Constantine of the UOCUSA

Metropolitan Constantine (Buggan) of Irinoupolis and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and the Diaspora fell asleep today at the age of seventy-six. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Metropolitan Constantine served the UOCUSA in various capacities for forty-five years, forty of those years as a hierarch of either the independent Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) or the UOCUSA (after much of the UAOC in the Ukrainian Diaspora was received into the Ecumenical Patriarchate). May his memory be eternal! More information on Metropolitan Constantine's life can be found here.

Weaverville Monastery Brotherhood Moves to Ukraine

A somewhat controversial monastery received into the American Orthodox Church (OCA) from the Ruthenian Catholic Church (more on that here) has been received into the autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church with the blessing of Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen) of the OCA to be reestablished in Ruthenia (the Transcarpathian oblast of the Ukraine).

Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan in the USA Undergoes Heart Surgery

Please remember Metropolitan Constantine (Buggan) of Irinoupolis, First Hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, in your prayers as he recovers from heart surgery, which he underwent this past Monday. Metropolitan Constantine is reportedly in good condition.

LA Parish Vandalized, Desecrated

St. Andrew's Church in Los Angeles, a parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, has been vandalized by an intruder. The intruder, whose identity is as of yet unknown, trashed the church's sanctuary, tore the altar out and dragged it into the nave, and scattered the reserved Body of the Lord and the sacred vessels on the sanctuary's floor.

Despite the desecration the parish proceeded with the celebration of the Lord's Transfiguration following the visit of area police to the church. More here.

Annual Ukrainian Orthodox Pilgrimage to New Jersey

The annual Ukrainian Orthodox pilgrimage to St. Andrew's Memorial Church in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, has once again taken place on St. Thomas' Sunday. The Sunday Liturgy, the main service of the pilgrimage weekend, was concelebrated by Metropolitan Constantine (Buggan) of Irinoupolis, First Hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA (UOCUSA), Archbishop Antony of Hierapolis, and Bishop Daniel (Zelinskyy) of Pamphilon.

Many clergy and laity participated in the pilgrimage, which is hosted by the administrative center of the UOCUSA and St. Andrew's Church, which was built as a memorial to the victims of the government-engineered famine (Holodomor) in Soviet Ukraine. More here.

Fr. John Henry No Longer Orthodox?

It appears that the recently resigned superior of St. Herman of Alaska's Monastery in Cleveland, Ohio, Igumen John (Henry), was removed from the ranks of the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA a month prior to his February arrest because of his failure to provide a full audit for the finances of the Monastery and its house of mercy. More on that and Fr. John's life can be found here.

Update (8:11pm): Although Fr. John's current ecclesiastical status remains unclear, he is apparently on a retreat at an Orthodox monastery in upstate New York and planning on entering a treatment program in Maryland at its conclusion. Back in Cleveland the interim administration at St. Herman's hopes to preserve its identity as an Orthodox Christian outreach and may meet with the members of the Greater Cleveland Council of Orthodox Clergy on 4 April. More here.

Cleveland Monastery Abbot Resigns Following Discovery of Weapons

Abbot John (Henry), the superior of a Ukrainian Orthodox monastery and house of mercy in Cleveland, Ohio, has resigned his abbacy and oversight of the house of mercy after investigators found 230 guns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition on Monastery property in the Cleveland area. More on that here.

My only personal experience with Fr. John came from a weekend retreat sponsored by a Chicagoland parish of the Kiev Patriarchate, at which Fr. John was the main speaker. I spent most of the weekend trying to figure out what was Orthodox about standing in a circle holding hands or advocating being "slain in the Spirit," but I spent the rest of the time wondering how on earth either the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA or the Kiev Patriarchate could be so lax in their clergy standards that they could allow such men to become parish priests, much less the abbots of monasteries...

The above aside, St. Herman's House of Mercy (attached to Fr. John's St. Herman's Monastery) has done a tremendous amount of good in Cleveland. That shall continue under the supervision of an interim administrative committee, but it's to be hoped that both the Monastery and its house of mercy will somehow survive this and grow from it.

Appeal for St. Luke's Church in Warners, NY

A parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, St. Luke's Church in Warners, New York, has suffered extensive damage to its community hall's roof due to a collapse caused by snow. For more on the accident or to donate to the upcoming repairs please see here.

Upcoming Commemoration of the Holodomor

The hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches of the USA (UOCUSA) and Canada (UOCC) of the Constantinopolitan Orthodox Church have issued a statement together with the Ukrainian Catholic hierarchs in North America concerning the commemoration of the seventy-seventh anniversary of the Holodomor, the artificial famine engineered by the Soviets that killed roughly four million people in the Ukraine and three million in southern Russia. Commemorative services and events for the Holodomor, which took place in 1932 and 1933, are usually held around the time of American Thanksgiving. The hierarchs' joint statement can be read here.

Nineteenth UOCUSA Council

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA (UOCUSA), a jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, has just finished its nineteenth council ("sobor"). Among other things the assembled hierarchs, clergy, and representatives of the laity heard a report from a hierarch of the schismatic Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) on the state of that jurisdiction in the Ukraine. The UOCUSA was part of the UAOC until the 1990s when it united with the Ecumenical Patriarchate's Ukrainian Orthodox Diocese of America. Its cemetery at St. Andrew's Memorial Church in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, is the burial site of a number of hierarchs of the UAOC, among them Patriarch Mstyslav of Kiev, the former metropolitan of the UOCUSA who moved to the Ukraine after it gained independence to reestablish the UAOC there. In addition to the greetings from the UAOC the council also received the greetings of Patriarch Bartholomew, who was represented by his exarch in North America, Archbishop Demetrius of Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Shepherd and Flock?

A large Ukrainian Orthodox parish in the Midwest just received its first hierarchical visit in twenty years. It's roughly five hours away from its diocesan see and is part of a diocese that comprises only twenty-five communities. It's also by no means the most geographically isolated of those communities - the local parish here in Portland, for example, definitely has it beat. And to be clear, we're talking about a visit from the diocesan bishop, not the First Hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA or anything like that.

My question is this: Is this the average experience of Orthodox parishes in North America? Our parish was rather spoiled under Archbishop Job (Osacky) of thrice blessed memory as we got yearly visits from him, but I know he had a rotation set up to ensure that he visited all the communities in his diocese at least once every two (or three?) years. The Midwestern American Diocese currently consists of eighty-two communities, so that's quite a lot of travel considering that such visits usually last a couple of days. Was his emphasis on knowing his diocese an exception to the rule though? How sad if it was :-/.