Rudyk, Stefan

Rudyk, Stefan [Рудик, Стефан], b 27 December 1891 in Maidan Lypovetskyi, Peremyshliany county, Galicia, d 26 March 1969 in Warsaw. Orthodox metropolitan. After completing theological studies in Zhytomyr and Orel in 1915, he became a village priest. In the interwar period he joined the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox church and served as a chaplain for Polish troops in Toruń, Katowice, and Cracow, until he was interned in Romania at the outbreak of the Second World War. He was later released, and he went to Germany before being assigned to a parish in Łódź in 1943. He was consecrated bishop of Wrocław-Szczecin in 1953 and then elevated to the office of archbishop of Białystok-Gdańsk in 1961. In 1965 he was made metropolitan.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]