Our Patron Saint

 Oros (Slavonic: Petra Pavla Orosa; Петра Павла Ороса) was born in July 1917, in the Hungarian village of Biri and moved to Transcarpathia in 1919, but was orphaned at a young age. His father, a Greek Catholic priest, died when Oros was just two years old, and his mother died when he was nine

In 1937, Oros entered the Greek Catholic seminary in Uzghorod, Transcarpathia. Today Uzghorod is a part of the western region of Ukraine.

In 1942, he was ordained a priest of the Greek-Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo, Ukraine, and began his pastoral service in a number of villages.

During the Second World War, he worked as a military chaplain in the Košice region of Slovakia (also considered Transcarpathia). 

When he then returned to his parish in 1944 it had fallen back under Soviet occupation. And the Communist Party’s campaign of religious persecution culminated in 1949, when pastoral activities were forbidden and all Greek Catholic churches in Ukraine were closed, and the Mukachevo eparchy was suppressed.

Despite ongoing persecution, Oros continued his pastoral activities in secret even though  religious leaders around his country were systematically imprisoned or executed. Oros was detained for several weeks by the KGB. 

Shortly after his release from the KGB, an arrest warrant was issued against Oros in 1953. After holding a Divine Liturgy in secret, he was caught by a policeman and murdered on Aug. 28 in Siltse, in southwestern Ukraine.

His death was immediately described as a martyrdom by the local Greek Catholic community, who increasingly invoked his intercession.

The Vatican announced the pope’s recognition of Oros’s martyrdom and Pope Francis has advanced him for canonization, recognizing his heroic virtue as a Servants of God, and he will now receive the title “Venerable.”