Nicholas Elko - Episcopate of Bishop Elko

Episcopate of Bishop Elko

The formerly immigrant Ruthenian Church was by the 1950s now overwhelmingly American-born and modernizing rapidly in the post-World War II era. Bishop Elko sought to engage the new generation by leading change within the Exarchate. He immediately sought and was granted permission by Rome to permit English, in addition to the ancient liturgical language Old Church Slavonic, to be used in the celebration of the Divine Liturgy.

He next established in 1956 a new weekly newspaper, The Byzantine Catholic World. The term "Byzantine Catholic" was relatively new and represented something of a re-branding for the Church. The term began in usage in the 1940s in an effort to clarify the ritual identification of the Church to the majority American Latin-Rite Catholics, replacing the traditional European appellation of "Greek Catholic". The Church roots were historically "Greek" in the sense that Christianity came to the Slavs in the 9th century by the missionary brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. But the new name aimed to evoke the even older and more glorious history of Eastern Christianity in Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire.

Elko's administration also undertook the construction of more than one hundred churches and schools. However, in the spirit of modernism, Elko recommended that many traditional Byzantine architectural features, such iconostasis, or as icon screens, be omitted or removed from the new or renovated churches. The Churches membership, largely in the northeastern United States, began to migrate to the West. Elko assigned priests to do organizational work there, and established new parishes in California and Alaska.