Father Peter Galadza awarded fellowship at Byzantine Research Center in Georgetown (09/28/03)

Father Peter Galadza awarded fellowship at Byzantine Research Center in Georgetown

OTTAWA - Harvard University recently awarded Father Peter Galadza a nine-month fellowship at its Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Research Center in Georgetown, Washington. The award is for the 2003-2004 academic year and is granted to recognized scholars working in the field of Byzantine studies. Father Galadza will be researching Byzantine funeral rites, a topic that attracted his attention several years ago when he was asked to direct the Ph.D. dissertation of one of his students, Robert Hutcheon M.D., who has just completed his thesis on Eastern Christian funerals and contemporary bereavement theory. Father Galadza will focus on the historical evolution of these services.

Together with Dr. Hutcheon, a protodeacon in the Orthodox Church of America, he plans to publish a book that would serve as a comprehensive introduction to the history, theology and pastoral psychology of the funeral rites celebrated by Christians of the Constantinopolitan tradition.

"The key to obtaining such fellowships is strong recommendations from other scholars and an original research project," stated Father Galadza. "Eastern funeral rites haven't received much attention, even though they're among the services that every parish must provide. But ultimately, funeral rites enflesh some of a community's most basic convictions. And in our day, when consumerism has come to dominate our worldview, the Eastern Christian funeral service is quite counter-cultural in an evangelical sense. Our projected book, then, should be very relevant to the current search for meaning," he explained.

Father Galadza is Kule Family Professor of Liturgy at the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in the Faculty of Theology at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. The professorship is named in honor of Peter and Doris Kule, Ukrainian Catholic philanthropists from Edmonton who have generously supported the Sheptytsky Institute since its move to Canada in 1990.

Father Galadza is also editor of the Institute's scholarly review, Logos. A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, as well as convener of the Eastern Liturgies Study Group of Societas Liturgica, an international association of liturgical scholars with over 500 members.

His study of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky's theology and liturgical work will soon appear in the series Orientalia Christiana Analecta, the monograph series of Rome's Pontifical Oriental Institute.

The Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Research Center was founded in 1940 when Robert and Mildred Bliss donated their expansive estate in Georgetown, along with their collection of Byzantine artifacts, to Harvard University. It is the best center for Byzantine Studies in North America and among the greatest in the world.

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