History of St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church, Ambridge, PA (1922-2022)
They came from the Carpatho-Rusyn villages of Šaryš and Zemplyn Counties, a remote part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire – places like Šambron, Šarišske Jastrabje, Čirč, Legnava, Vŷslanka, Volica, Radvaň, Zbijne, Nechvaľ Poljanka, and Vylágy. They were Carpatho-Rusyn peasants from little villages tucked between the verdant valleys of the Carpathian Mountains. The poorest and most downtrodden of people. Like most immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, Europe, they came to Ambridge, Pennsylvania, and surrounding communities for a chance at economic advancement.
As Carpatho-Rusyns, they were already a minority in their home country. The world they left was indeed a challenging one. They left at a time when Europe was in the throes of a great economic depression. They left at a time when the Hungarian authorities wanted to make all of their minorities good “Hungarian” citizens; and that meant restricting the use of their language, having them learn and speak Hungarian, in hopes that they would adopt a Hungarian nationality.
As farmers and shepherds, their lives were hard. They were barely eking out a living from the rocky soil and hillsides of the Carpathians when news came of a land across the sea where money could be made.
Like most immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, they weren’t coming to stay – just to make money to go back, buy their own piece of land, and live a less difficult life. But World War I changed all of that.
They wouldn’t return to a central Europe embroiled in war; and afterwards, the United States enacted quota laws, restricting the numbers of immigrants that could come from southern and eastern Europe. Afraid they would never be able to come back if trouble brewed in Europe again, they decided to settle and make Beaver valley their home.
At the time, Ambridge and the industrial towns of the Beaver Valley were booming. There was much work to be had for whomever wanted it – and immigrants from many lands came to the area in search of work.
The Carpatho-Rusyns came in great number.
A TURBULENT CHURCH HISTORY
Those early immigrants, longing for their own land, came with great faith – a faith in God that had sustained them as a people through generations of persecution, abuse, and epidemics. But even their church had not been immune to the political and religious turmoil Europe experienced during the Protestant Reformation.
The Carpatho-Rusyns fell within the sphere of the Eastern Christian Church, the portion of the Christian world that fell under the influence of the Eastern half of the early Roman Empire. The Carpatho-Rusyns themselves had been converted to Christianity by the Macedonian brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius, invited by Prince Rostislav of the Great Moravian Empire to bring Christianity to the Slavic tribes within the borders of his state in 863 A.D.
From the very beginning, the Christian faith of these simple but devout Carpatho-Rusyn people was challenged. Already in the 860s, this Slavic territory was the battleground between East and West, between Eastern and Western church missionaries and the philosophies and the theologies of their respective branches of the One Church of Christ.
While Prince Rostislav had invited Eastern Christian missionaries from Constantinople (then known as Byzantium), Western church missionaries of German origin had themselves come into the Slavic lands to bring their particular brand of Christianity to the pagan Slavic peoples. From that time unto the present, the Carpathians have been the battleground for the souls of the Carpatho-Rusyns.
The eventual decision of the Carpatho-Rusyns however, was to adopt the Christianity brought to them by Saints Cyril and Methodius. The brothers set up a bishop in Mukačevo for the Carpatho-Rusyn people prior to being driven from the region by German missionaries. The Czech, Slovak, and Polish tribes, also converted by Eastern missionaries, eventually gave way to the Germans and became Western Christians. But the Carpatho-Rusyns, tucked in the isolated mountains, maintained their Eastern Christian Church and its practices.
When the Christian Church split in 1054 into Roman
Catholic West and Orthodox East, the Carpatho-Rusyns fell clearly in the folds of the Orthodox Church. But the Protestant Reformation created a scenario that has influenced Carpatho-Rusyn religion to this very day.
In the midst of the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Hapsburg rulers of Austria-Hungary decided that they wanted an end to religious division, and their answer lay in creating a nation in which all subjects were Catholics. Missionary orders of priests and monks were brought in to bring Protestants back to Catholicism. But what to do about the Orthodox population in the northeast portion of the Empire, the Carpatho-Rusyns and Ukrainians? The answer was to incorporate the Orthodox Churches into the Catholic Church, giving bishops and priests equal standing with the Roman Catholic clergy through the creation of a new religious faith, Greek Catholicism.
Originally called the Uniate Church (to indicate it was now united with Rome), the Greek Catholic Church was created through two successive unions. The Union of Brest (1596) saw most of the Orthodox bishops of northern Ukraine, Belarus, and other parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth pledge allegiance to Rome, though a few Orthodox bishops did not. These would eventually set up a much smaller parallel hierarchy to the Greek Catholic Church.
To the south, under Hapsburg rule, the Orthodox clergy had no social standing and had to physically work right alongside the Orthodox peasants. The Hapsburg authorities approached the Carpatho-Rusyn and Ukrainian clergy with an arrangement: They could keep all of their Orthodox Eastern practices – married clergy, sacraments as they practiced them, etc. In exchange, the Roman Church authorities simply asked that the Orthodox clergy recognize the Pope of Rome as the universal head of the Church. The clergy would also be granted all the rights of Roman Catholic clergy, eliminating their “peasant” status. With the Union of Užhorod (1646), the Orthodox adherents of northeastern Austria-Hungary became members of the Greek Catholic Church.
This was the same Greek Catholic Church to which those early Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants who came to Ambridge belonged.
A TROUBLED CHURCH IN A NEW LAND
When the Carpatho-Rusyns first came to Ambridge, they formed a Greek Catholic parish for all Greek Catholics, both Carpatho-Rusyns and Ukrainians. That parish was Saints Peter and Paul Greek Catholic Church, today known as Saints Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church. But the new parish was to be divided over the next two decades by religious and ethnic differences.
It was 1907 and the Greek Catholics in America were receiving a bishop from Europe for the first time. It was an exciting time, after years of reporting to local Roman Catholic bishops who knew little and understood even less about these people called Greek Catholics, they were getting a bishop of their own. American Roman clergy were already up in arms that the Greek Catholic clergy called themselves Catholic and yet were married men. Roman Catholic bishops wrote regularly to the Pope asking him to do something to regularize the situation in America, requesting that there should be no married Catholic clergy in the United States.
The new bishop arrived in the form of Bishop Stephen Soter Ortynsky. Though initially welcomed by the Greek Catholics in America, soon distrust developed. Bishop Ortynsky was from Galicia, a region of Austria-Hungary with a large number of Ukrainians. The Carpatho-Rusyns feared he may wish to try to make them Ukrainians as well, a movement that was gaining momentum in Europe at the time. The Carpatho-Rusyns from the Hungarian portion of the Empire feared the loss of their Carpatho-Rusyn identity, that Ortynsky would try to “Ukrainianize” them.
In this atmosphere, something of incredible note happened in Rome; and, as bishop, it was Ortynsky’s job to declare it to his faithful. Just one month after he arrived, the Pope issued a decree called Ea Semper, which announced how the Greek rite was to function in America. Among other things, Ea Semper declared that property owned by the parish must be placed in the name of the local Roman Rite bishop, the chrismation of infants could no longer occur, and the Greek Catholic seminarians in America could no longer marry. This, coupled with the fear of Ukrainization, caused many Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants in America to join the Orthodox Church between 1908 and 1920.
At the time, the only Orthodox Church in America was the Russian Orthodox Church, and so it became the church of the Carpatho-Rusyns returning to Orthodoxy.
In all, between 1891 and 1920, more than 50,000 Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants left Greek Catholicism for Orthodoxy. From 1907 to 1914 alone, 72 parishes or groups of Carpatho-Rusyns joined the Russian Orthodox Church.
Despite the turmoil, the Greek Catholic Church in America continued to grow through massive immigration. In fact, from 1880 to 1924, one-third of all Carpatho-Rusyns immigrated to the United States.
Since 1907, there had been growing tensions in the Greek Catholic community in America over nationality. Carpatho-Rusyns and Ukrainians each wished to worship in their own way and foster their own ethnic identities. Parish after parish in the United States were dividing along ethnic lines.
Saints Peter and Paul in Ambridge weathered this division quite well. The parish had reached a functioning “compromise”. If the priest was a Ukrainian, then the cantor was to be a Carpatho-Rusyn, and vice versa.
But eventually, the differences in ethnicity and worship style became too much and, as numbers of immigrants increased, it became apparent to the Carpatho-Rusyns that they could have their own parish.
On February 19, 1922, a group of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants met in their own Saint Michael’s Hall in Ambridge to form a church for the Carpatho-Rusyns from Hungary: the Uhro-Rusyns. With George Sivy presiding, a set of officers was elected and Saint John the Baptist Uhro-Rusin Greek Catholic Church was established.
The new congregation turned to the Slovak community for help and held its first services in Divine Redeemer Church’s Parish Hall on Merchant Street.
In 1923, the parish purchased property from Ernest F. Kemena and his wife on which to build their new church. The church was constructed at this site on Fifth Street, the current location of Saint John’s Parish Center.
The parish’s first pastor was Father Stephen Malanyak, who served until 1924.
In 1926, the new Saint John’s purchased property for its parish house on Glenwood Drive.
Saint John’s continued to grow throughout the next few years. Yet 1929 was again to see a significant event in the life of the Carpatho-Rusyn-American Church that would forever change the destiny of Saint John’s and its parishioners.
TURMOIL AGAIN!
In 1929, the Pope issued a new edict called Cum Data Fuerit, again focused on the function of the Greek Catholic Church in the USA. However, the document didn’t really become public knowledge among the Carpatho-Rusyns in the United States until 1932. And it only became public because it was called into action.
At the time, young Carpatho-Rusyn-American Greek Catholic men who wished to become priests generally returned to the seminaries in Europe for their training, either to Prešov or Užhorod.
In 1932, three young American men were returning to the United States from Europe. As married men, they readied for ordination. But the Greek Catholic bishop at the time, Bishop Basil Takach, invoked the Cum Data Fuerit edict and refused to ordain them.
The pastor of one of these men, Father Orestes P. Chornock, inquired as to why his parishioner was not being ordained but received no explanation. Concerned that the Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholics might be forced to adopt Roman Catholic ways, being “Latinized,” Father Chornock issued a circular addressing the subject, which was published in the Rusyn language newspaper Rodina in Cleveland.
Both the Carpatho-Rusyn community and the bishop became up-in-arms. Father Chornock was given 24 hours to leave his Bridgeport, Connecticut parish, the largest Carpatho-Rusyn parish in the United States, for a small one in Roebling, New Jersey. His inquiry as to why he had to leave was answered with a suspension. His parishioners backed him, and other priests protested to the bishop, only to likewise be suspended from their priestly duties. The largest Carpatho-Rusyn fraternal organization in the United States, the Greek Catholic Union (CGU), asked the editor of their newspaper, Father Stephen Varzaly, to inform the Carpatho-Rusyns in America about the situation. He did, was ordered to resign his position by the bishop and, upon refusing to do so, was suspended.
It was not long after that Father Peter E. Molchany, pastor of the national Greek Catholic Cathedral in Munhall, PA, was removed from his assignment for supporting the Greek Catholics’ practices. The upheaval continued. At the Greek Catholic Union’s 1932 Convention in Detroit, the delegates established a new organization called K.O.V.O., the Rusyn acronym for the Committee for the Defense of the Eastern Rite. The group’s sole purpose was to defend Greek Catholics in America from the Latinization of their Church.
Priests wrote letters of protest to Rome. Fathers Chornock, Molchany, and Varzaly were soon excommunicated. Parishes began to be in turmoil. What were they to do – submit to the authority of Rome or defend their Eastern Christian ways?
The parishioners of Saint John’s in Ambridge were not immune to these activities. A local branch of K.O.V.O. was started and, within the parish, people were divided as to what the congregation should do.
THE ROAD TO ORTHODOXY BEGINS
On July 27, 1933, K.O.V.O. called a special congress in Pittsburgh from which it issued a resolution stating that if the Pope of Rome did not honor the arrangements set forth in the Union of Užhorod back in 1646, that their members would declare themselves independent of Rome. In 1934, they received their reply from Rome, printed in the Amerikansky Russky Viestnik, the largest Carpatho-Rusyn newspaper in America:
“This regulation [the Cum Data Fuerit edict] arose, not now but anew from the peculiar conditions of the Ruthenian (Carpatho-Rusyn) population in the United States of America. There it (the Ruthenian Church) represents an immigrant element and a minority, and it could not, therefore, pretend to maintain there its own customs and traditions, which are in contrast with those which are the legitimate customs and traditions of Catholicism in the United States, and much less to have there a (married) clergy, which could be a source of painful perplexity or scandal to the majority of American Catholics.”
This document made many Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholics come to the realization that they could no longer stay in union with the Roman Church. A movement had begun.
The pastor of Saint John’s in Ambridge, Father Gregory Moneta, called upon his parishioners to remain loyal to Bishop Takach and the Roman See, but many of his parishioners felt strongly that, to preserve their cherished church and its customs, they needed to follow Father Chornock and his group.
In 1936, Fathers Chornock, Molchany, Varzaly and others, including former Saint John’s pastor Father Constantine Auroroff, met to lay the groundwork for a new Carpatho-Rusyn Church in America. The First Council of that new church was held at the YMCA in Pittsburgh in 1937. In attendance were 27 priests and 107 lay delegates from 48 parishes. Among them were Michael Dufinec and Peter Wanchik from Saint John’s in Ambridge.
This group voted to call the 300-year old Union of Užhorod null and void and voted to return to their ancestral faith, Orthodox Christianity.
BACK TO ORTHODOXY: BUT WHERE?
Now that the group knew its next steps, it faced a new challenge. When returning to Orthodoxy, under what jurisdiction should they go? Their fellow Carpatho-Rusyns who had returned to Orthodoxy at the turn of the century had joined the Russian Orthodox Church. But these new converts had seen the result of that. The first group had been “Russianized” by the Russian Church, having lost their cherished Carpathian Plain Chant, a form of church singing unique to the Carpatho-Rusyn people. The cry of this new group of Orthodox converts became “Ani do Rimu, ani do Moskvi” – “neither to Rome nor to Moscow.” The eventual decision was for the group to create its own diocese and approach the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople to oversee it.
The group petitioned Ecumenical Patriarch Benjamin I, who welcomed them with open arms, consecrating the widowed priest Orestes Chornock as the new diocese’s first bishop in 1938. On September 19, 1938, a Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox Church was established, the first to exist since the people were led into union with Rome in 1646.
Back in Ambridge, the situation was becoming critical within Saint John’s parish. Some wished to be free of Rome and Bishop Takach. Others wished to stay. These were trying times for the parish as each group tried to worship within the church on Fifth Street.
Eventually, the parish split and a court case ensued as to which group would retain the church. Those who wished to remain attached to the Catholic Church lost the case and left to create their own parish, Saint Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Ambridge.
Saint John’s had weathered the storm brought on by this Roman edict, and the result was that it was still an active church community. The decision of course was: now separated from the Greek Catholic Church in America, what would its affiliation be? In 1940, the parish decided to join with Bishop Chornock and became a parish in the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese.
A TIME TO BUILD
The next thirty years were a time of growth for Saint John’s. The Beaver Valley, like the rest of industrial western Pennsylvania, was growing, booming with the work generated during World War II. Work was good and the baby boom had begun. The parish was growing and in need of new facilities.
In 1953, the parish broke ground for a new church, the stately structure that now stands on Glenwood Drive. Led by pastor Father Frank Mesaros and a dedicated group of lay leaders, the parish went about the job of raising the money necessary to build a larger church. By 1954, the parishioners were laying the cornerstone, with now-Metropolitan Orestes Chornock presiding. The new, massive church was consecrated and dedicated on October 28, 1956. Stained glass windows were then added, the gifts of generous parishioners and parish organizations.
In 1960, Father John P. Gido served his first Divine Liturgy in Saint John’s as its new pastor. Little did he know at the time that it would become his pastorate for 46 years. In the same year, the new iconostas, icons, and external mosaics were blessed, making Saint John’s one of the most beautiful churches in the Beaver Valley. By 1965, the parish, through its diligent fundraising efforts, was burning the mortgage, making it truly “their” church.
In 1970, the parish decided to build a new parish house adjacent to the church which was completed in 1971.
In 1972, the parish saw its first native son receive the sacrament of the Holy Priesthood. Father R. Michael Zak was ordained by Bishop John Martin on April 30 at Saint John’s. He was followed in later years by Father Michael Semenko and Father Deacon John Youhas.
The parish celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 1972 by further beautifying the church interior, adding the iconography in the sanctuary.
The parish also maintained pride in the heritage of its founders, becoming one of the founding groups to participate in the first Ambridge Nationality Days celebration nearly 60 years ago. Having an interest in preserving its heritage for its young people, it also started the Karpaty Folk Ensemble at the parish in 1977, teaching authentic Carpatho-Rusyn songs and dances to its youth. The group performed at church events and festivals throughout the area until 1982.
A SPIRITUAL RENAISSANCE
The late 1970s and 1980s were difficult times for industrial towns of western Pennsylvania. In contrast to the growth years of the 1940s-60s, the steel industry, long the backbone of the economy for the entire Pittsburgh area, was on the decline. Mill after mill was closed, and the Ambridge area was not immune to this. They fell one by one – American Bridge, Jones and Laughlin Steel, ARMCO, and so on. These were times that try people’s faith. They tried the faith of the people of Saint John’s, and thanks to the strength provided by God, the test of faith brought Saint John’s to a new level of spiritual growth and development.
In 1986, the parish initiated adult Bible study to help its members fully understand Holy Scripture and, by doing so, to make it an integral part of their lives. Throughout the rest of the 1980s and 90s, Saint John’s renewed its emphasis on spiritual growth. The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts was reinstituted during Lent. The religious education program for children was redesigned, dramatically increasing attendance and even attracting non-parishioners. Open houses were developed, inviting the community in to learn about Saint John’s and Orthodoxy. The parish joined the Diocesan Harvest 2000 effort to help support and establish mission parishes. It reinstituted Orthodox practices forgotten for centuries, including infants receiving communion and frequent communing by members during the Divine Liturgy. It installed a central Pantocrator icon to help its parishioners “look into heaven,” and a lighted parish sign identifying the parish and welcoming those outside. In 1997, it completely renovated its religious education center in the church basement and installed computers as teaching tools – the first religious education program in Beaver County to do so. And it installed a new altar, adorned with the icons of Christ’s appearance at and after His resurrection.
The people of Saint John’s dedicated themselves to charitable work, holding free Thanksgiving dinners for the poor, and collecting items, guided by the parish ACRY, to help abused women and AIDS victims; it provided Christmas presents for the mentally ill. Even the children of the religious education program got involved, singing for retired monastics during holiday seasons and raising money to care for the homeless and feed those in need.
In 2004, Pani Pauline Gido reposed in the Lord. 2006 saw long-time pastor Very Rev. Protopresbyter John P. Gido retire. Very Rev. Robert Prepelka was assigned as the new pastor – which precipitated a change to the parish by-laws. The by-laws stipulated that only a married priest could serve St. John’s, harkening back to the church’s founding; however, Fr. Robert was not married, and so the by-laws were amended to allow for this.
In 2012, the parish celebrated 90 years of the parishioners of Saint John’s doing God’s work. The parish not only continued outreach, but expanded upon them as well. The church, its ACRY and Junior ACRY, regularly cooked and delivered meals to Ambridge’s Center for Hope to feed the poor, serving and interacting with the clients to show Christ’s love. The parish continued to provide financial support to a host of Orthodox and community organizations from the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City and the Mission of Saint John the Compassionate in Ontario, to Habitat for Humanity and the Women’s Shelter of Beaver County.
Fr. Robert Prepelka retired in 2018. St. John’s was without a full-time pastor for almost a year. During this time the parish was served by local clergy, such as Fr. David Urban and Deacons Art Steinstra and Marc Wisnosky, as well as Diocesan Chancellor Frank Miloro and retired priests Fr. John Brancho and Fr. John Fedornok (who drove in from Maryland!). St. John’s weathered this storm only through the love and devotion of its parishioners and the leadership of new church president Timothy Polas.
In 2019, Rev. Fr. Vincent Dranginis was assigned as pastor. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and church attendance dropped – mostly because the churches were closed. For the first time, the faithful of St. John’s were not able to gather and celebrate Holy Week and Pascha.
In March of 2021, Fr. Vincent was transferred, but the newly-ordained Fr. Marc Wisnosky was sent to St. John’s to fill in for Lent and Pascha. On May 3, the day after Pascha, Fr. Marc was officially assigned as the 17th pastor of St. John’s.
Like many parishes world-wide, St. John’s limped out of COVID hobbled, but not broken. The faithful returned, seeing 70 in attendance for Pascha 2021, where there had been none in 2020.
The parish suffered the loss of Pastor Emeritus Very Rev. Protopresbyter John Gido on November 25, 2021. His funeral service and funeral liturgy were presided over by Metropolitan Gregory, accompanied by dozens of priests of the diocese and Pittsburgh region.
Christmas 2021, the people of St. John’s recorded themselves singing Koledy, traditional Carpatho-Rusyn Christmas carols, and uploaded the video to YouTube, sharing the joy of the Nativity with the world.
St. John’s began to prepare for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the parish. On February 20, 2022, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary, Fr. Marc and cantor John Righetti led the parish in singing the Divine Liturgy partly in Rusyn Church Slavonic. The 100th anniversary Hierarchical Divine Liturgy was celebrated by His Eminence Metropolitan Gregory with Fr. Marc Wisnosky assisting on July 10, 2023. A celebratory banquet was held at Franzee’s-Javy’s Banquet Hall in Ambridge.