Eastern Catholic Churches revisited

In my post Eastern Catholic Churches: An extended hierarchy update, among many things I touched upon the appointment of new bishops in patriarchal and major archepiscopal Eastern Churches in communion with Rome. Today's Vatican Information Service dispatch gives an example of how a major archbishop governs in his Church and how bishops are appointed by the synod and consented to by the Holy Father. In the Roman Catholic Church, only the Pope can erect a new diocese or elevate a diocese to an archdiocese, thus creating a new archdiocese complete with suffragan dioceses. This last happened in the U.S. on 29 December 2004 when the Holy Father elevated Galveston-Houston from a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of San Antonio to a metropolitan see with six suffragan dioceses, all of which were also taken from San Antonio. Here in Salt Lake City we are the eastern-most suffragan of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

VATICAN CITY, 15 JAN 2008 (VIS) - Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, major archbishop of Lviv of the Ukrainians, Ukraine, with the consent of the Synod of the Greek- Catholic Ukrainian Church and in accordance with Canon 85, para. 3 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, has erected the archiepiscopal exarchate of Lutsk of the Ukrainians (area 40,300, Catholics 4,000, priests 10), Ukraine

The Holy Father has given his consent to the canonical election by the same Synod of Fr. Josaphat Oleg Hovera, rector of the major seminary of Ternopil- Zboriv, Ukraine, as the first exarch of the new exarchate. The bishop-elect was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine in 1963 and ordained a priest in 1990.

Bishop-elect Hovera is only 26 months older than I am!