Submenu Categories--------SELECT ARTICLE Historical Timeline A Short History The Old Country Coming to America The First Churches The Struggle for Recognition Renewed Efforts to Organize A Greek Catholic Bishop Comes to America The Episcopacy of Bishop Basil Tackach The Episcopacy of Bishop Daniel Ivancho The Episcopacy of Bishop Nicholas T. Elko A Change in Status Results in Two Eparchies New Honor; New Bishops and A New Eparchy The First Metropolitan The Episcopate of Bishop Michael J. Dudick The Eparchy of Parma The Byzantine Catholic Church in the West: The Eparchy of Van Nuys The Church in Transition Looking to the Future

The Vatican's 1890 decree requiring all Greek Catholic priests serving in the United States to be celibate deeply disturbed the Greek Catholic clergy. Since most of the Greek Catholic clergy were in fact married, they considered the decree to be an outrageous and unwarranted attack on their centuries-old tradition by both Rome and the unsympathetic American hierarchy. Meeting in Hazleton in late 1891, the clergy strongly protested the decree and petitioned the Holy See for the appointment of their Vicar General to administer the affairs of the Greek Catholic Church in the United States. When their protests and petitions fell on deaf ears, the clergy unilaterally acted in 1892 and selected from their own ranks a widowed priest, the Reverend Nicephor Chanat, to be Vicar General. Father Chanat's role essentially was to act as an intermediary between the American Catholic bishops and the Greek Catholic clergy. Unfortunately, the bishops ignored his appointment and the Greek Catholic clergy refused to follow his leadership. Thus, in 1896, Father Chanat resigned his position.

After numerous petitions submitted by clergy and lay committees requesting the appointment of a bishop for the Greek Catholic Church in the United States, the Holy See finally acted. In May 1902, upon the recommendation of the Hungarian government, the Holy See named Father Andrew Hodobay, a canon and member of the Chapter of the Prešov Diocese, as Apostolic Visitator for all Greek Catholics in America. Father Hodobay's assignment was to investigate "all aspects of the religious controversy" concerning Greek Catholics in America.

Initially, however, Canon Hodobay's mission in the United States was undermined by his public admission that he came to America as the official representative of the Hungarian government. In response to Hodobay's political allegiances, the Greek Catholics in America began to fractionalize along national lines. For example, people who emigrated from the Galician region of Central Europe began to distinguish themselves as Ukrainian, rejecting the more universal, if imprecise, term Ruthenian or Rusin. In turn, the Carpatho-Rusins divided themselves along regional lines into two factions: a group identifying themselves from the Prešov region and a group identifying themselves from the Užhorod region. Given his admitted political sympathies, Hodobay's mission, rather than engendering unity and harmony, served instead to expose the divisions within the nascent Greek Catholic Church in America.

Regrettably, the constant intrigues and internal rivalries which plagued the mission of Canon Hodobay only served to weaken Church discipline and to exacerbate the problem of schism and to accelerate the exodus to the Russian Orthodox Church.
After five years, Canon Hodobay's fractious mission in America ended with his recall to Europe. Nonetheless, the Holy See accepted Hodobay's recommendation that a bishop be named for the Greek Catholic faithful in the United States.