He had served as an Eastern Catholic priest in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, prior to his reception into Orthodoxy, and had been a schoolmate of St. Alexis Toth in their native land.
After his marriage he entered the Holy Orders and was ordained a deacon and then a priest followed by his assignment to a parish in Lokhovo.
Alexander accompanied Metropolitan Sylvester Sembratovych of Lviv (Lvov, Lemberg) and visited Rome for a papal jubilee.
Alexander came under attack by the celibate Roman Catholic clergy as he traveled, organizing parishes to serve the immigrant faithful from Europe.
Then on August 7, 1916, he was consecrated Bishop of Pittsburgh, an auxiliary bishop, to minister to the needs of the Carpatho-Rusyns, formerly members of the Ruthenian Catholic Church, whose parishes numbered over 160 when he was received (out of roughly 200 total Russian Orthodox parishes in the American Lower 48).
Stephen, however, retired to a Roman Catholic monastery in Graymoor, near Philipstown, New York, where he died in 1933.