Father Cyril N. Pinchak, S.J., and Father Christopher M. Staab, S.J., are among 29 Jesuit priests who were ordained recently in several liturgies across the United States and Canada.
Father Pinchak, 33, is a native of Shaker Heights. His family attended both the Church of the Gesu in University Heights and St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church in Brecksville. Father Pinchak said he encountered joyful religious men in the Jesuits at Gesu School and the Brothers of the Holy Cross at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills.
A graduate of John Carroll University, he was active in cross-country, track, an a cappella group, student government and campus ministry. His discernment intensified his senior year, and after earning a bachelor?s degree in English, he entered the Jesuits in August 2006.
Father Pinchak spent several months as a novice teaching English at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy. Missioned next to Loyola University Chicago, he earned a master?s degree in English while serving as the chaplain for the men?s and women?s running teams. Returning to U of D Jesuit for three years, he taught English and coached hockey, cross-country and track. While attending Regis College at the University of Toronto, he earned a master of divinity degree while serving as a deacon at the Byzantine-Slovak Cathedral in Toronto. Highlights of his formation include a summer in Poland teaching English and two summers in Bolivia studying Spanish.
Father Pinchak was ordained as a bi-ritual priest in both the Roman and Byzantine Catholic Churches on June 24 at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral in Parma. He celebrated his first Mass at Gesu Parish and a Divine Liturgy at St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church.
Father Pinchak will work toward a licentiate in Byzantine theology at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.
Father Staab, 40, is a native of Cleveland. At St. Ignatius High School, he first met the Jesuits and later connected with them again at John Carroll University, where he earned a bachelor?s degree in English in 1998.
After graduation, Father Staab worked for a year in Ireland for L?Arche, an organization where volunteers and men and women with disabilities live together in community. Then he returned to the U.S. and earned a master?s degree in English from the University of Pittsburgh. He was an editor at West Group, a publishing company in Cleveland, before working for the Detroit Province of the Society of Jesus while discerning his vocation to the priesthood.
In 2005, Father Staab entered the Jesuits and, as a novice, taught English at Loyola High School in Detroit and learned Spanish in Cochabamba, Bolivia. In 2010, he studied philosophy for two years in Lima, Peru, at Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. For a year he lived in the small city of Ja
