Lubomyr Cardinal Husar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lubomyr Husar, MSU (Ukrainian: Любомир Гузар) (born 26 February 1933) is a Cardinal of the Catholic Church and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, a minority church in Ukraine but the second largest sui juris church in full communion with the Holy See. After the recent transfer of the see of Lviv to Kiev (Kyiv) in August, 2005, he is now the Ukrainian Greek Major Archbishop of Kiev and Halych.

[edit] Biography

Born in Lviv, then in Poland but now in Ukraine, Husar fled with his parents in 1944 during World War II. They briefly lived in Salzburg, Austria, then emigrated to the United States.

From 1950 to 1954 he studied at St. Basil's Ukrainian Catholic College Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut. He studied at The Catholic University of America and Fordham University in the United States, and was ordained a priest on 30 March 1958 for the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Stamford.

From 1958 to 1969, he taught at St. Basil's College Seminary and was pastor at Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Kerhonkson, New York between 1966 and 1969. In 1969, Husar went to Rome, where he spent three years earning a doctorate in theology at Urbanianum Pontifical University. He then entered the Monastery of the Studites in Grottaferrata in Italy, and was named its Superior in 1974.

Styles of Lubomyr Cardinal Husar

Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Kiev

Consecrated a bishop in 1977 by Josyf Cardinal Slipyj, he was named Archimandrite (Archabbot) of the Studite Monks in Europe and America in 1978. He organized a new Studite monastery in Ternopil, Ukraine, in 1994, and was elected by the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Church as exarch of the archiepiscopal exarchy of Kiev and Vyshhorod in 1995, confirmed by the pope the following year. Although once a citizen of the United States, Husar gave up his American citizenship upon returning to his native Ukraine.

In December 2000, Pope John Paul II named Husar apostolic administrator of the Ukrainian Greek Major-Archdiocese of Lviv, and in January 2001 the Ukrainian Greek synod elected him Major Archbishop. The next month, Pope John Paul II appointed him Cardinal Priest of S. Sofia a Via Boccea. He was one of the cardinals considered papabile (unusual for an Eastern Catholic) at the 2005 Papal conclave to succeed John Paul II, participated as a cardinal elector but was not elected to the papacy himself.

The major archiepiscopal see of Lviv was moved on August 21, 2005, to the city of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, making Cardinal Husar the Ukrainian Greek Major Archbishop of Kyiv and Halych.