Every diocese is required to have a Chancellor as stated in Canon Law:

“In every curia a chancellor is to be appointed whose principal function, unless particular law establishes otherwise, is to take care that acts of the curia are gathered, arranged, and safeguarded in the archive of the curia.” (Can. 482 §1.) If it seems necessary, the chancellor can be given an assistant. (§2.)

By church law, the Chancellor is also an ecclesiastical (Church) notary within the curia, whose signature establishes authenticity for any acts, for judicial acts only, or for acts of a specific case.

The Chancellor’s duties include:

  • Drawing up the acts and instruments regarding decrees, dispositions, obligations, or other things which require their action;
  • Recording faithfully in writing on any decree what has taken place and to sign it with a notation of the place, day, month, and year;
  • Having observed what is required, to furnish acts or instruments to one who legitimately requests them from the records, and to declare copies of them to be in conformity with the original.

Meet Our Chancellor and Assistant Chancellors

Reverend Christopher M. Ford

The Reverend Christopher M. Ford
Ordained to the Holy Priesthood in 1987, Fr. Christopher M. Ford attended St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia and the Gregorian University in Rome where he received a license in Canon Law. He has served as Pastor in several parishes, as Judge in the Metropolitan Tribunal and as the Episcopal Vicar of the Western Vicariate. On January 5, 2022, he was appointed Chancellor of the Archdiocese and Pastor of St. Peter Claver Parish in West Hartford.

The Very Reverend Steven Boguslawski was appointed Assistant Chancellor by Archbishop Leonard P. Blair on July 1, 2020.

Ordained to the Holy Priesthood in 1987, Father Boguslawski studied at Yale University and the Dominican House of Studies in Washington D.C. Father Boguslawski was appointed Moderator of the Curia for the Archdiocese of Hartford in May 2014 and Vicar General in October 2014.
Father Boguslawski was incardinated to the Archdiocese of Hartford on February 3, 2020.

The Reverend George S. Mukuka was appointed Assistant Chancellor by Archbishop Leonard P. Blair on October 19, 2020.