Voliansky, Ivan Ya.

Voliansky, Ivan Ya. or Wolansky [Волянський, Іван; Voljans'kyj], b 2 July 1857 in Yabloniv, Husiatyn county, Galicia, d 1 August 1926 in Dychkiv, Ternopil county. The first Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest in the United States of America. He was sent to the United States in 1884 by Metropolitan Sylvester Sembratovych at the request of the Ukrainian community in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. There he established the first Ukrainian Catholic parish and built a church. He also organized a branch of the Brotherhood of Saint Michael; a church choir; a reading room; a school; and a printing house, where he began publishing the newspaper Ameryka in August 1886. In 1889 he returned to Galicia, and in 1896–8 he did missionary work among Ukrainians in Brazil, particularly in the state of Santa Catarina. In 1917–20 he was a missionary in the Kholm region. Although he had intended to return to the United States after the First World War, doing so did not prove feasible, and he remained as the pastor of Dychkiv.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]