THE SPEAKERS The Most Reverend Gintaras Grušas was appointed by Pope Francis as Archbishop of Vilnius, Lithuania, on April 5, 2013. Born in Washington, D.C., he worked for IBM before studying for the priesthood in Steubenville, Ohio and Rome, Italy. In 1992, he was ordained a deacon for the Archdiocese of Vilnius, and assigned as General Secretary of the committee for the apostolic journey to Lithuania of Pope St. John Paul II. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1994. In the same year, he was chosen as the General Secretary for the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference. In 1997, he returned to the Pontifical St. Thomas Aquinas University in Rome, where he received a Ph.D. in Canon law in 2001. In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI appointed then-Msgr. Grušas as an Ordinary of the Army, and he was consecrated a bishop. Since 2021 he has served as president of The Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE). Archbishop Grušas speaks Lithuanian, English, Italian and French. He will host the Sixth World Apostolic Congress on Mercy (WACOM) in Vilnius, June 7-12, 2026. “Let’s meet at the Congress in Vilnius – the city chosen by God so that through Saint Faustina and Blessed Michael Sopócko the world would be reminded of His Mercy,” he says. The Most Reverend J. Michael Miller, CSB, Archbishop of Vancouver, has been the chief shepherd of Vancouver’s 400,000 Catholics since January 2009. Born in Ottawa, Archbishop Miller grew up in the nation’s capital before attending the University of Toronto. He then entered the novitiate of the Basilian Fathers (the same religious order as Fr. George Kosicki), and made his first profession of vows in 1966. In 1975, Pope St. Paul VI ordained him to the priesthood. He completed his Licentiate and Doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1979. In 2011, Archbishop Miller established the first permanent diaconate program in the Archdiocese, and in 2015 he established the Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary, Redemptoris Mater. He has invited the foundation of nine new religious communities of women in the Archdiocese. He also re-established the tradition of the Red Mass and the St. Thomas More Guild of Catholic lawyers, and has seen to the formation of a chapter of Legatus. Besides English, Archbishop Miller is fluent in Spanish, Italian, and French.
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