"When our muscles were still sore, I found out that I had a new marathon in the life of the Church," Bishop Stepan said after his episcopal consecration, according to the Lviv Portal.
After his priestly ordination for the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Lviv in 2006, Bishop Stepan served as a military chaplain. From 2012 to 2019, he was parish priest of the Garrison Church of Sts. Peter and Paul and served as an advisor to the Lviv archeparchy.
While young for a bishop, Bishop Stepan is not unexposed to human suffering, having conducted at least 76 funerals for Ukrainians killed in the Donbas region since 2014 amid a war with pro-Russian separatists.
Bishop Stepan said that when accepting his position, he thought of the martyrs in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church "who became priests and bishops at a time when there were no solemn liturgies" and ended their lives exiled in labor camps. He said that he prayed for the martyrs' intercession to make him worthy of the ministry of a bishop in the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.
A native of Lviv, Bishop Stepan studied at Ukrainian Catholic University and Holy Spirit Major Seminary in Lviv before earning a master's degree in theology from the Catholic University of Lublin.
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halyč was Bishop Stepan's principal consecrator.