On December 19, 2021 in Philadelphia (USA), the vicar “bishop” of the Philadelphia UOC-KP Luka Zgoba was officially presented. This was reported on the Facebook page of the Kyiv Patriarchate.

“Vicar Bishop Luka will now be able to supplement the parish life of Ukrainian communities in the United States and Canada with the necessary bishop’s blessings and rites,” the message says.

Luka (Bohdan) Zgoba’s meeting took place in the Cathedral of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Philadelphia, the center of the vicariate of the UOC-KP in the USA and Canada.

“We have finally got a bishop who will henceforth revitalize our Ukrainian communities here on the spot. Many thanks to His Holiness Patriarch Filaret for this,” Filaret’s supporters in the USA are quoted as saying.

As the head of the cathedral community, Thomas Geni, noted, “with the arrival of the bishop of the Kyiv Patriarchate in the United States, any manipulations and intrigues of the enemies of the Ukrainian Orthodox diaspora will cease.”

As previously reported, on December 13, 2021, the secretary of the vicariate of the UOC-KP in the USA and Canada was elected in Kyiv as “Bishop of Philadelphia, vicar of the Kyiv diocese.”