Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church belongs to the Catholic family of churches.
Governance: hierarchical.
Eastern Catholic, Byzantine rite, in communion with Rome.
The Byzantine-rite church of Ukraine in full communion with Rome — Orthodox in the look of its worship, Catholic in its allegiance, and the church the Soviet Union tried and failed to abolish.
Heritage
Born of the Union of Brest in 1596, when Orthodox bishops of the Kyiv metropolia entered communion with Rome while keeping the Byzantine liturgy, their own church law, and a married parish clergy. Immigrants from Galicia brought it to the Pennsylvania coal country from the 1870s onward. In 1946 the Soviet state forcibly dissolved the church in Ukraine, making it for four decades the largest banned religious body in the world; it survived underground and re-emerged publicly in 1989. In the United States its parishes are gathered under the Archeparchy of Philadelphia and eparchies based in Stamford, Chicago, and Parma.
Theological family
Fully Catholic in doctrine, confessed in a Byzantine idiom: the same faith Rome teaches, expressed through theosis, icons, and the theology of the Christian East. It is in full communion with the pope and is not an Orthodox church — the single most common misfiling this record exists to correct.
Who decides what
A self-governing (sui iuris) church headed by the Major Archbishop of Kyiv with his own synod of bishops, in full communion with Rome. American eparchies have their own bishops; parish life is led by priests who may be married men ordained after marriage, alongside celibate clergy.
What a first-time visitor would find
The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, sung nearly throughout, amid icons and incense — a visitor could easily believe they had walked into an Orthodox parish. Infants are baptized, chrismated, and given communion; liturgy may be in Ukrainian, English, or both; Easter (Pascha) towers over the year.
What it has always cared about
Fidelity under persecution — the underground church of 1946–1989 is the modern martyrology it carries; the preservation of Ukrainian language and identity in the diaspora; and the long argument, lived rather than theorized, that communion with Rome need not mean surrendering the East.
Its gift to the wider church
A living demonstration that the Christian East and West can be in full communion without either ceasing to be itself — and a twentieth-century witness of a whole church that kept the faith illegally for forty years and came back alive.
Commonly confused with
Constantly with Ukrainian Orthodox churches, which share its liturgy and heritage but are not in communion with Rome — this church is Catholic, not Orthodox. The word "Greek" in its name refers to the Byzantine (Greek) rite, not to Greece or Greek ethnicity.
Range of views inside it
Range in language (Ukrainian, English, mixed), in calendar observance, and in parish culture between long-settled diaspora communities and newer arrivals, including those displaced by the current war.
A note from the mapmakers: RCMS 2020 publishes no separate row for this church, so we hold no verified US congregation count. Nothing here may be asserted of a specific parish — its language, calendar, or clergy. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Ukrainian Greek Catholic parishes typically…" and yield to the eparchy's own materials.
Sources: The Eastern Christian Churches: A Brief Survey (Ronald Roberson, Pontifical Oriental Institute) · Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia — our church (Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia)
Where Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church churches are on the map
77 Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 20 states.
- Pennsylvania — 26
- Connecticut — 8
- New Jersey — 7
- New York — 6
- Illinois — 5
- Ohio — 4
- California — 3
- Michigan — 3
- Massachusetts — 2
- Maryland — 2