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Our righteous father '''Alexis of Wilkes-Barre''' was a [[missionary]] [[priest]], sent from his homeland in Slovakia as a [[Uniate]], who, in order to serve and protect his flock in the United States in a hostile Latin environment, recognized the need to lead them in a return to their Orthodox Christian heritage. His [[feast day]] is celebrated on [[May 7]].

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After marrying Rosalie Mihaluk on [[April 18]], 1878, he was [[ordination|ordained]] to the priesthood in 1878 by [[Bishop]] Nicholas Toth, the Uniate Greek Catholic bishop of Presov. In a few years his wife Rosalie, whose father also was a priest, and their only child were to die. After his ordination Father Alexis was an assistant priest in Saros county before becoming the curate in the United Greek Catholic Church in Homrogd. Then Bishop Nicholas Toth appointed Father Alexis his [[chancellor]]. In 1881 the bishop appointed him director of the United Greek Catholic Seminary of Presov and professor of Canon Law and Church History. He continued in these position under Bishop Toth's successor, Bishop John Valyi.

==In America==

Then late in the 1880s, Father Alexander Dzubay, who studied with Father Alexis in the seminary, wrote a petition from America to Bishop John asking that Father Alexis be sent to America. The bishop agreed and sent Father Alexis as a "missioner." He arrived in the United States on [[November 15]], 1889, and on [[Thanksgiving Day]], [[November 27]], Father Alexis conducted his first services in the new [[St. Mary Cathedral (Minneapolis, Minnesota)|St. Mary's Church]] in Minneapolis as the first resident priest to serve this church officially. However, the church edifice was incomplete, there were no furnishings, no [[vestments]], but a debt. Over the next year Father Alexis worked with his community, preaching, asking for donations, acquiring furnishings, vestments, and bringing the parish to an organized, stable institution, all this without receiving any salary.