The Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Fra’ John Dunlap, has admitted cardinal-designate Msgr. Mykola Bychok, C.Ss.R., Bishop of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul of Melbourne to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, with dignity and rank of Bailiff Grand Cross of Honour and Devotion.

After the conferment of the insignia, Msgr. Luis Manuel Cuña Ramos, Prelate of the Order of Malta, celebrated mass in the chapel of the Magistral Palace in Rome.

Msgr. Mykola Bychok, C.Ss.R. will be the youngest of the cardinals appointed by Pope Francis in the Consistory on December 8, 2024.  Ukrainian and born in 1980, he joined the Redemptorists Order in July 1997 and carried out his religious training in Ukraine and Poland. In 2005 he was ordained priest in Lviv and became missionary in the Mother of the Perpetual Help Church in Prokopyevsk, Russia, Superior of Saint Joseph’s Redemptorists Monastery, pastor of the Mother Parish of Perpetual Help in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, Treasurer of the Redemptorist Province of Lviv, and since 2015 vicar of the Ukrainian parish of Saint John the Baptist in Newark, New Jersey, part of the Archeparchy of Philadelphia of the Ukrainians.

In 2020 he was appointed Bishop of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul of Melbourne and in 2021 was consecrated as third Bishop of the Melbourne Eparchy by His Grace Peter Comensoli, Archbishop of Melbourne, at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, in Melbourne.