Perhaps the unused cathedral -- a deteriorating monument to the strong will of East Slavic immigrants who worked in the steel mills of the Steel Valley -- really will be saved this time.

	Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral in Munhall. The Carpatho-Rusyn Society purchased the vacant church and will turn it into the National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural Center. Click photo for larger image.

A Pittsburgh-based, national cultural organization plans to transform the structurally sound, historically significant St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral at 10th Avenue and Dickson Street, Munhall, into the National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural Center.

The cathedral was a working church until 1993, when the congregation decided to abandon it and build a new one on Greentree and West Run roads, a few miles away.

The Carpatho-Rusyn Society purchased the church in April for $25,000 from another organization that had hoped to renovate it but was never able to do so.

"It is the most historic building for Carpatho-Rusyns in the United States," said John Righetti of Ohio Township, president of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society, which has 1,700 members across the nation and is growing.

As part of its 10th anniversary celebration this weekend, the society will open the cathedral to its members, who are traveling to Pittsburgh from all over the United States for the festivities.

Worldwide, there are about 1.5 million persons who identify themselves as Carpatho-Rusyns.

Carpatho-Rusyns don't have their own homeland. They have lived along the crest of the Carpathian mountains for 1,500 years. Like other ethnic minorities, they are scattered in many countries: Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, the Ukraine and Hungary.

Outside Eastern Europe, one of the largest Rusyn populations, about 600,000 people, lives in the United States and about 60,000 are in Pittsburgh.

"The U.S. is the second largest Rusyn population in the world. Pittsburgh is the largest in the United States," Righetti said.

Righetti said the society wants to turn the building into a cultural center with a lecture and concert hall. To do that, it will be launching a capital campaign and looking for grant money.

"While the building needs a lot of work, it is structurally sound," said Rich Laychock of Hershey, a mechanical engineer. He and architect Joseph Parimucha of Alexandria, Va., analyzed the building before the group purchased it.

"Our architect said it will take $300,000 to do everything," said Righetti.

Annie O'Neill Susan Timo, a trustee of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society, cleans the pews at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral in Munhall yesterday. The society purchased the vacant church and will turn it into the first-ever National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural Center. The building will be shown to society members from all over the country at the society's 10th anniversary celebration this weekend. Click photo for larger image.

He said the building is historically important to Rusyns because it was their first cathedral in America, a place where key decisions regarding Rusyn religious and political life were made by a community that still was closely tied to Eastern Europe.

The church's history dates to 1896, when Carpatho-Rusyns who came from Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland and Hungary to work in the steel mills formed a congregation.

By 1903, they had saved enough money to build the cathedral. They hired Hungarian architect Titus de Bobula to design the church, using as his model a Rusyn cathedral in Uzhorod, a city in the Ukraine that was an ancestral home to many of the first members.

By 1929, the church had more than 700 families and was named Cathedral for the Ruthenian (Rusyn) Diocese in America.

The church was sold to a group called St. John's Eastern European Cultural Center, but that group declined in size and never was able to restore it.

Righetti said the building has been designated as a historic landmark by the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, but the plaque is missing.

"We are going to get another one," he said.

Today's events at the Munhall cathedral will begin at 6:45 p.m. and include the group's annual meeting and a Rusyn film festival. Tomorrow night, a reception will be held there from 6:30 to 8.

On Sunday, the church will be one stop on a bus tour of Pittsburgh, which will take visitors to key sites for Rusyns, including Andy Warhol's boyhood home in Oakland. Warhol was of Carpatho-Rusyn descent.