On the 2nd June the Vatican Information Service announced the following:
“OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS
– Appointed Bishop Hlib Lonchyna M.S.U., curial bishop of the major archbishopric of
Further research reveals that Bishop Hlib is in fact not to be the Exarch but Apostolic Administrator in succession to Fr Benjamin Lysykanych. The vacancy in the exarchate has already lasted three years and it seems Bishop Hlib’s task will be to prepare its affairs and administration for the appointment of an Exarch in 2010.
Here is a link to an Interview with Bishop Hlib by the Religious Information Service of Ukraine from 2002.
Bishop Hlib was born on 23 February 1954 in Steubenville, Ohio. He obtained an education in Detroit in the primary and secondary schools of Immaculate Conception Parish, which were run by the Basilian Fathers and Sisters.
He obtained his theological education in Rome at the Urbaniana University. He defended a doctorate in liturgy at the Pontifical Oriental Institute.
He became a monk in the Monastery of Saint Theodore Studite in Grottaferrata near Rome, in which he took his vows on 19 December 1976. He was ordained to the priesthood by Josyf Cardinal Slipyj on 3 July 1977. For a few years he ministered at the Parish of Saint Nicholas in Passaic, New Jersey.
In 1994, he moved with the monastic community to Ukraine. He was a chaplain at Holy Spirit Seminary in Lviv, where he taught liturgy and biblical studies, as well as at the Lviv Theological Academy and the Institute of Higher Religious Culture. He also worked as an attaché at the Apostolic Nunciature in Kyiv.
On 11 January 2002, he was nominated a bishop of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church with the titular see of Bareta. His episcopal consecration was in Saint George’s Cathedral on 27 February 2002. He was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Patriarchal Curia of the Major Archbishopric and Head of the Curia of Kyiv and Halych Metropolitanate.
On 1 March 2002, His Beatitude Lubomyr named Bishop Hlib a Senator of the Ukrainian Catholic University. From 25 June 2002 to 2 June 2007, Bishop Hlib was the Head of the Senate.
From 22 March 2002 to 8 June 2004, he was the Head of the Patriarchal Liturgical Commission.
On 14 January 2003, by a decree of His Holiness John Paul II he was named Apostolic Visitator for Ukrainian Greek-Catholics in Italy. From 25 March 2003 to 9 May 2006, he was the Apokrisarius-procurator of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church at the Roman See.
On 1 July 2003, by a decree of His Beatitude Lubomyr he was appointed postulator of the cause of beatification and canonization of Servant of God Andrey Sheptytsky.
On 4 March 2004, His Holiness John Paul II nominated Bishop Hlib Apostolic Visitator for Ukrainian Greek-Catholics in Spain and Ireland.
On 16 June 2006, His Beatitude Lubomyr Husar appointed Bishop Hlib as Head of the Religious Administration of the Kyiv and Halych Metropolitanate. On 28 September 2006, he became head of the Department of Church Commissions and Responsible for Monastic Matters within the Patriarchal Curia.
In the past, Bishop Hlib has fostered close ecumenical relations with prominent Anglican theologians, notably Professor John Milbank of the University of Nottingham, leader of the “Radical Orthodoxy” traditional-progressive movement within Anglicanism.
He is seen by some as a supporter of the “patriarchal movement”, as conceived by Josyf Cardinal Slipyj, for the Roman See to recognise the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as a patriarch, like the other Eastern Churches in communion with the Holy See, of which the Ukrainian is by far the largest. But such a move is not currently under consideration, owing to the importance to the Vatican of not complicating the need for improved relations with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, also strongly active in Ukraine, is resisting pressures for it to withdraw to allow the establishment and recognition of a separate Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church led by a new Orthodox Patriarch of Kyiv.)