Wednesday December 4, 2013, 9:07 PM
BY  RICHARD COWEN
STAFF WRITER

Excerpt: Passaic, NJ - The bells of the Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel rang loudly over First Street on Wednesday as the Most Rev. Kurt R. Burnette was ordained the fifth bishop of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic.

The ordination followed the ancient traditions of the Byzantine Church, a movement within Roman Catholicism that began in Slovakia and the Ukraine and is more than 1,000 years old. Burnette will oversee all 84 Byzantine Catholic parishes on the Eastern Seaboard, from Maine to Florida. His elevation to head the Eparchy of Passaic comes at the behest of Pope Francis, who appointed him to the post on Oct. 29.

In a letter read during the ordination, Pope Francis urged the congregation to give the new bishop “a warm welcome and to remain in communion with you.”

The cathedral has stood on First Street since the 1890s, a landmark to the waves of Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian immigrants that flooded Passaic in the mid-19th century. The neighborhood these days is largely Latino, but the cathedral remains the symbolic center of the Byzantine Church on the East Coast.

- See more at: www.northjersey.com