Vatican City: (By Kate Quiñones for CAN) Pope Francis named a New Mexico pastor as bishop of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy, apostolic nuncio to the United States Cardinal Christophe Pierre announced on Friday.

Father Artur Bubnevych will serve as bishop of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Protection of Mary of Phoenix.

Bubnevych has served as a pastor at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Byzantine Catholic Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, since 2014. He was one of the five United States priests selected to attend a Synod on Synodality in Rome this year.

Bubnevych was born in Ukraine in 1975 in the small town of Perechin in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. He graduated from the Uzhgorod Greek Catholic Seminary of the Blessed Theodore Romzha in 1998. He was ordained to the subdiaconate in 1999 and in 2001 earned an advanced theological degree from the International Theological Institute in Australia. He later worked as a project secretary at the chancery of the Eparchy of Mukachevo in Ukraine, from 2006 to 2013.

Bubnevych moved to the Eparchy of Phoenix to serve in a pastoral role and was ordained to the priesthood on Sept. 14, 2014.

The Byzantine Church is divided into five eparchies or dioceses in the U.S. The Eparchy of Phoenix ministers to more than 2,500 Catholics of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Church in 13 states in the Western U.S.

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The Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, known as the Byzantine Catholic Church in the U.S., is one of several Eastern Catholic rites in the United States, which include the Melkite, Maronite, Chaldean, and Ukrainian rites. These rites are in full communion with the papacy while retaining their own liturgical practices.

The Byzantine Church practices the Divine Liturgy, or Mass, as it was practiced in Greek-speaking Byzantium as well as Ukraine and Russia. Married men can be ordained to the priesthood in the Byzantine Church. Icons are usually prominently displayed in Byzantine parishes, which are usually smaller compared with Latin-rite parishes.

“It is a Church for all people; people who are attracted to our spirituality and Byzantine liturgy,” Bubnevych told CNA in April.