Formation: Bishop Benedict was born the eldest of six children into an Irish Roman Catholic family on 19 April 1947, in Pottsville, PA, and named after his father, William Joseph Churchill. He was baptized in St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Locust Gap, PA.
His education took place mostly in parochial schools, then in Jesuit high schools, a Benedictine University, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, and the University of Toronto. During his childhood and adolescence, he experienced the usual Catholic sequence of First Confession, First Communion, and Confirmation, and he was an altar server for several years.
His work life after University included some adjunct teaching at Fordham University and New York University, and working for Xerox Corporation.
During his college years at St. John’s University in Minnesota, he became a Benedictine Oblate at St John’s Abbey. Earlier he had known of the daily round of the canonical hours, but here he experienced them while praying with the monastic community, and that daily round, including the weekly reading of the Psalter, has remained with him as the norm of prayer, even if he has not always managed to put it into practice.
While he was doing research for his doctorate, he spent time in Sicily, where he attended a Byzantine-rite church not far from where he was staying (the Liturgy there was in Greek). After his return from Italy, he found a local Byzantine-rite Catholic parish, where he became a cantor.
After several years and upon a challenge from an Orthodox friend, he approached the pastor at St. Mary’s Orthodox Church in Stamford, Connecticut, where then Bishop JOB (of blessed memory) received him into the Church by Chrismation on September 17, 1983, with the name Benedict.
Call to Ministry: Thoughts of the priesthood had been with him since early childhood, but he heeded his parents’ advice to finish college first. Not long after he became Orthodox, he mentioned seminary studies to his pastor, who replied, with a chuckle, that he should “let the chrism dry.” Some years later, after his retirement from Xerox, it occurred to him that perhaps it was time to test whether he really had a vocation to the priesthood. He applied to St. Vladimir’s Seminary and was accepted. In due course, he was ordained to the diaconate (2009) and the priesthood (March 14, 2010, St. Benedict’s day).
Thoughts on Ministry: Ministry in the Church means largely renouncing one’s own will to serve the Church. In the first seven years of Bishop Benedict’s priesthood, that meant working at St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, occasionally teaching courses at the Seminary, and serving there and as a supply priest in various parishes. From August 2014 until late 2023, it meant serving as priest in charge of a tiny mission in North Carolina, while continuing to work as an editor for St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, and now it means serving as Bishop of Hartford and New England.