Vasile Louis Puscas (Romanian: Pușcaș; 13 September 1915 – 3 October 2009) was an American prelate of the Romanian Catholic Church who served as the first Apostolic Exarch and later first Eparch of the Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St. George’s in Canton in the United States.

He was born in Aurora, Illinois, into a Romanian immigrant family and grew up in the local Catholic milieu, preparing from an early age for service to the Romanian Byzantine (Greek-Catholic) community in America.

Educated for the priesthood under the patronage of the Latin Rite Diocese of Rockford, he pursued ecclesiastical studies in seminaries oriented toward Eastern-rite ministry, reflecting the complex canonical and pastoral situation of Romanian Catholics in the United States during the mid-twentieth century.

Vasile Louis Puscas was ordained a priest on 14 May 1942 and began pastoral work among Romanian Byzantine Catholics, serving parishes that often lacked a stable institutional framework and relied heavily on itinerant clergy.

His ministry included parish administration, liturgical service in the Byzantine rite, and the preservation of Romanian religious and cultural identity within a predominantly Latin-rite American Catholic environment.

Over the decades he gained a reputation as a capable organizer and respected pastor, which led to his increasing involvement in efforts to regularize the canonical status of Romanian Byzantine Catholics in the United States and to secure them a distinct hierarchical structure.

On 4 December 1982, he was appointed Apostolic Exarch for Romanian Catholics of the Byzantine rite in the United States, heading a newly created jurisdiction that responded to the pastoral needs of Romanian faithful dispersed across the country.

He was ordained a bishop and installed on 26 June 1983, choosing Canton, Ohio, as the seat of the exarchate and designating St. George’s as his cathedral church. When the exarchate was elevated to the status of an eparchy (diocese) dedicated to St. George’s in Canton, he became its first eparch, overseeing the consolidation of parishes, the promotion of vocations, and the development of structures appropriate to an Eastern-rite Catholic diocese.

During his episcopate, Vasile Louis Puscas worked to strengthen the institutional life of the Romanian Byzantine Catholic community, fostering catechesis, liturgical renewal, and closer ties between clergy and laity.

He also maintained connections with the persecuted Romanian Greek-Catholic Church in communist Romania, and after the fall of communism he supported the reorganization and revival of Romanian Eastern Catholic life both in the homeland and the diaspora.

Vasile Louis Puscas resigned the governance of the eparchy in 1987, becoming its bishop emeritus while remaining a respected figure within the community he had helped to shape.

He spent his final years in Aurora, where he had been born, continuing to be remembered as a pioneering hierarch who had guided the transition from scattered missions to an organized eparchy.

Vasile Louis Puscas died on 3 October 2009 in Aurora at the age of ninety-four, leaving a legacy as the foundational bishop of the Romanian Catholic Eparchy of St. George’s in Canton and a key architect of Romanian Byzantine Catholic life in the United States.