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Stephen (Dzubay) of Pittsburgh

The Right Reverend Bishop Stephen (Dzubay) of Pittsburgh was a bishop of the Russian American Metropolia, received from the Unia in 1916. He had served as a Uniate priest in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, prior to his reception into Orthodoxy, and had been a schoolmate of St. Alexis Toth in their native land.

Life

The son of Fr. Stephen and Justine Dzubay, Alexander Dzubay was born on February 27, 1857 in Kalnik, Berezhanents, in the Carpatho-Russian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He attended school at the gymnasium in Uzhgorod before entering the Uniate Uzhgorod Theological Seminary. After his graduation in 1880, Fr. Alexander married Andrea Chuchka, the daughter of a priest.

After his marriage he entered the Holy Orders and was ordained a deacon and then a priest followed by his assignment to a parish in Lokhovo. After his wife died in November 1881, Fr. Alexander was assigned as the second priest of Trinity Church in Uzhgorod. In 1887, Fr. Alexander accompanied the Metropolitan of Sembratov visited Rome for a papal jubilee.

In 1887, Fr. Alexander came to the United States and took an assignment to a Uniate parish in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Having been married, Fr. Alexander came under attack by the celibate Roman Catholic clergy as he traveled, organizing parishes to serve the immigrant faithful from Europe. For his activities among the Uniate parishes, Fr. Alexander was chosen their vicar by the Uniate clergy. Becoming disillusioned by the Unia, Fr. Alexander decided to become an Orthodox. On July 30, 1916, Fr. Alexander was received into the Orthodox Church.

With his reception by the Russian hierarchy in America, Fr. Alexander was tonsured as a monk with the name Stephen. Then on August 7, 1916, he was consecrated Bishop of Pittsburgh, an auxiliary bishop, to minister to the needs of the former Uniates Carpatho-Russian whose parishes numbered over 160 when he was received (out of roughly 200 total Russian Orthodox parishes in the American Lower 48). After only eight years of service in the episcopacy, however, Bp. Stephen returned to the Unia, with hopes of heading a Uniate diocese, and the Carpatho-Russian ethnic diocese of the Metropolia was dissolved.

With his advancing age, Bp. Stephen, however, retired to a Roman Catholic monastery in Graymoor, New York. where he died in 1933.

Succession box:
Stephen (Dzubay) of Pittsburgh
Preceded by:
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Bishop of Pittsburgh and the Carpatho-Russian Diocese
(Metropolia)

1917-1924
Succeeded by:
Benjamin (Basalyga)
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Source

Tarasar, Constance J. Orthodox America 1794-1976 Development of the Orthodox Church in America. Syosett, New York: The Orthodox Church in America, 1975.