Bishop Stephen (Dzubay) of Pittsburgh proclaimed himself head of the North American Metropolia on this day in 1922. One person who contributed a lot to the foundation of the modern-day OCA is Rev. John Ireland (d. 1918), the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of St. Paul, MN. When Greek-Catholic (Slavic) clergy started to arrive in the Mid-West, those from the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not have an ecclesiastical structure. One of them, St. Alexis (Toth) of Wilks-Barre (1859-1909), was suspended from ministry by Rev. Ireland for being a married priest, contrary to the custom of the Western Church. As a result of Rev. Ireland’s efforts to expel Greek-Catholics from the US, Fr. Alexis decided to return to his roots and the faith of his forefathers. (Before his conversation, the Russian Church existed only in California and in the “upper one” – Alaska.) Fr. Alexander Dzubay (b. 1857) was Fr. Alexis’ schoolmate and was ordained a priest in 1881 in Uzhgorod (then Ungvár, Austria-Hungary). His wife died the same year, and he served alongside his father-in-law, a priest. Then he moved to the US, founding Greek Catholic churches in central Pennsylvania. To hold the Greek Catholics back from Latinization in 1916, Fr. Alexander joined the Russian Orthodox Church. In August of the same year, two hierarchs of the Russian Church, Archbishop Evdokim (Meshcherskii) of the Aleutians and North America and Bishop Alexander (Nemelovskii) of Canada consecrated Fr. Alexander, Bishop Stephen (his monastic name), to minister to the former Uniates. The ruling Archbishop of the diocese, Evdokim, returned to Russia in 1917 to participate in the All-Russian Council and never returned. At the Second All-American Sobor in Cleveland in 1919, Bishop Alexander was elected a ruling bishop (later, he was confirmed in this capacity by Patriarch Tikhon and the ROCOR). However, Bishop Alexander could not save the diocese from impending bankruptcy. In these circumstances, Bishop Alexander asked Metropolitan Platon (Rozhdestvenskii) of Kherson and Odesa to return to the US, where he served from 1907 to 1914. Metropolitan Platon had a strong personality (he prevented the diocese from collapsing financially), and Bishop Stephen did not want to take chances regarding his fate under the new leader. On this day in 1922, he proclaimed himself head of the diocese, which consisted mainly of people with the same background as his. Together with Bishop St. Gorazd of the Serbian Church of Moravia and Silesia (see my report on Sep. 27 under the link), they consecrated Archimandrite Adam (Filipovskii) as Bishop of Philadelphia and the “Carpato-Russians.” One month later, the Third All-American Sobor in Pittsburgh elected Metropolitan Platon as the head of the diocese. Bishop Stephen lost and decided to return to Greek-Catholicism. He died in 1933. Source: Michael Woerl, “Bishop Stephen (Dzubay, d. 1933) of Pittsburgh and the Carpatho-Russians,” Historical Studies of the Russian Church Abroad |
