Early Life
Born on December 14, 1909 to Rusyn immigrant parents in Donora, Pennsylvania, a steel town in the Monongahela River Valley, he attended the public schools there and in 1930 graduated from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He completed graduate theological studies at the Greek Catholic Seminary in Uzhhorod and at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. Bishop Basil Takach ordained him to the priesthood on September 30, 1934 at St. Nicholas Greek Catholic Church in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
He next served as pastor in several parishes throughout the Exarchate and as the spiritual director of the Greek Catholic Union of the USA, the oldest continuous fraternal benefit society for Rusyn immigrants and their descendants in the U.S. Elko also served in the administration of the Exarchate as Dean of the Cleveland Deanery, Consultor, and eventually as Vicar General. Pope Pius XII in 1952 named him a domestic prelate with the title of Reverend Monsignor. He was appointed that same year as the Rector of the Exarchate's new seminary, the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of SS. Cyril and Methodius.
Bishop Daniel Ivancho appointed Elko in 1954 as the Rector of St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral. Yet just three months later, Ivancho abruptly resigned as bishop, and the Holy See directed Elko, as the Vicar General of the Exarchate, to administer it. On February 16, 1955 Archbishop Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, the Vatican's delegate to the United States, announced that Elko would be elevated to the episcopacy. On March 6, 1955 he was ordained as Bishop at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Italy by Cardinal Eugène-Gabriel-Gervais-Laurent Tisserant, Dean of the College of Cardinals and the Secretary of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
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