New Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Appointed
January 19, 2012.

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed the Most Reverend William C. Skurla, as the fifth Metropolitan Archbishop of the Byzantine Archeparchy of Pittsburgh. He will be enthroned in Pittsburgh on April 18, 2012.

Bishop Skurla was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on June 1, 1956, the son of the late John and Mavis Skurla. He attended Catholic and public elementary schools, graduating in 1974 from Chisholm High School, Chisholm, Minnesota.

He graduated from Columbia University in New York City in 1981 with a concentration in philosophy, then studied at Mary Immaculate Seminary in Northampton, Northampton County, receiving a master's of divinity in 1986 and a master's of theology in 1987. Skurla entered the Byzantine Franciscan community in Sybertsville, Luzerne County, in 1981. He was ordained a priest in 1987 at St. Mary Byzantine Catholic Church in Freeland, also in Luzerne county. He served as pastoral administrator at St. Melany Byzantine Catholic Church in Tucson, Ariz., from 1993 until 2002.

He was 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. Skurla succeeds Metropolitan Archbishop Basil M. Schott, who died in June 2010.

The Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh is the only self-governing (sui iuris) Eastern Catholic Church in the United States. It stretches from Erie, Pennsylvania to Texas and has 58,000 parishioners and 65 priests in 78 parishes.