Chornock, Orestes

Chornock, Orestes [Čornok], b 1883 in Transcarpathia, d 17 February 1977 in Stratford, Connecticut. Churchman and metropolitan. A Greek Catholic priest who was opposed to the Latinization of the Eastern rite in the Unites States of America, Chornock, together with some of the Transcarpathian clergy, set up in the 1930s an independent American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic church, which came under the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. Formerly the church's see was in Bridgeport, Connecticut; now it is in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In 1939 Chornock was consecrated bishop and in 1965 he was promoted to metropolitan. At first Chornock was a Russophile, but eventually he drew closer to the Ukrainian community.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]