Victor J. Pospishil

Archimandrite Monsignor Victor J. Pospishil (1915 – 2006) was a Ukrainian Catholic priest and a leading scholar on canon law and the Eastern Catholic churches.

During the 1960s he was a controversial advocate for divorced Catholics, arguing in his 1967 book Divorce and Remarriage: Towards a New Catholic Teaching in favor of the reform of the laws that prevented them from receiving the sacraments.

He was born 4 February 1915 in Vienna, Austria, then capital of Austria-Hungary. Following his training at the Theological Academy and Seminary in Đakovo, Croatia, he was ordained a priest on 16 June 1940. During World War II he served as an army chaplain and in parishes in Yugoslavia and Austria. Afterwards he studied liturgy and canon law at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, receiving his doctorate from the Pontifical Gregorian University.

He immigrated to the United States in May 1950 where he joined the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archdiocese in Philadelphia. He served in parishes in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. In recognition of his work in canon law Pope John XXIII gave him the title of Private Papal Chamberlain in 1960. In 1976 was named an Archimandrite by Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. From 1966 to 1976 he served on the religious studies faculty of Manhattan College.

He died 16 February 2006 in Old Bridge, New Jersey and is buried in St. Gertrude Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey.