Nicholas Elko
Nicholas Thomas Elko (December 14, 1909 – May 18, 1991) was an American Ruthenian Greek Catholic and the third bishop of the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh. At the age of 46 he became the first American-born bishop of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church. He later served as Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, a Latin Church archdiocese. 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