The first Ukrainians to Argentina who settled in Misiones came from a predominantly Catholic region of Ukraine, Galicia. However, the local Argentine (Latin Rite) Roman Catholic Church opposed the creation of a separate Ukrainian Catholic Church. As a result, for the first ten years of their settlement, Argentine Ukrainians Catholics did not have their own Eastern-rite Catholic priests, and were subject to intense missionary activities by Polish Roman Catholics. In response, many of them converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, whose rituals are virtually identical to those of Ukrainian Catholicism. Without the help of their Mother Church in Galicia, local Ukrainians built their own churches, chapels, and homes for priests, and petitioned church authorities in Galicia to send priests to them. Finally, in 1908, Father K. Bzhukhovsky was sent to Misiones from Brazil. He was succeeded in the province of Misiones by several more priests from Ukraine. In 1922, the Ukrainian parishes in Misiones were visited by the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky of Lviv. The first Ukrainian Catholic Church in Buenos Aires region was built in 1940 and in the city in 1948. In 1978, the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Argentina was granted its own Eparchy (Eastern-rite equivalent of a diocese). Andriy Sapeliak was the first Ukrainian Bishop in Argentina.