Huculak, Lawrence

Huculak, Lawrence [Huculjak, Lavrentij], b 25 January 1951 in Vernon, British Columbia. (Photo: Lawrence Huculak.) Ukrainian Catholic metropolitan of Canada. He attended high school in Vernon and at Saint Vladimir’s College in Roblin, Manitoba. He joined the Basilian monastic order in 1969 and earned a B.A. from the University of Ottawa in 1974. He continued his studies in Rome at Saint Anselm’s University and the Pontifical Oriental Institute, from which he earned a Doctorate in Oriental Studies (1985). His dissertation on the divine liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom in the Ukrainian church tradition provided the basis for his publication The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the Kievan Metropolitan Province during the period of union with Rome (1990). He would later become an adjunct lecturer at the Newman Theological College in Edmonton.

Huculak was ordained in 1977. From 1986 to 1996 he served as a parish priest in Mundare, Alberta. In September 1996 he became hegumen of the town’s Basilian monastery and in April 1997 he was ordained and installed as bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Edmonton. Early in 2006 he became the Metropolitan Archbishop for Ukrainian Catholics in Canada and moved to his see in Winnipeg.

[This article was updated in 2009.]