BEKISH, IRENEY

BEKISH, IRENEY, metropolitan (2 October 1892–18 March 1981). In 1914 he graduated from the Kholm Theological Seminary, was ordained priest in 1916, and served as assistant rector in the Cathedral of Lublin, Poland, from 1916 to 1919. From 1935 to 1947 he was a member of the Polish consistory Diocese of Pinsk, as well as chairman of the missionary commission. From 1938 to 1944 he was dean of the Counties of Sarna, Kamen-Kashursk, and Pinsk, but during World War II was a displaced person in Germany. From 1947 to 1952 he was rector of the Russian Orthodox Church in Charleroi, Belgium, then rector of Holy Trinity Church in McAdoo, Pennsylvania, from 1952 to 1953. From 1953 to 1960 he was the Bishop of Tokyo and Japan, from 1960 to 1965 the Archbishop of Boston and New England, and from 1965 until his death the Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of all America and Canada of the “Metropolia,” historically the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Missionary Diocese of North America. Following the autocephaly of the “Metropolia” as the Orthodox Church in America (q.v.), he became the first primate, serving from 1970 to 1977.