The Parish of the St. Cyril of Turau of the BAOC in Brooklyn was established in the autumn of 1950 by the refugees from the Soviet occupied Belarus who in the late 1940's under an act of Congress were admitted into the United States and settled in the Greater New York area. 

In the beginning the Divine Services were held in a rented store on Ashford Street in the East New York section of Brooklyn. 

With the arrival in 1951 of Bishop Vasil the need for a more dignified location became very urgent and an agreement was reached with the congregation of the Holy Trinity Carpato-Russian Orthodox Church on E. 4-tn Street in Manhattan to hold joint Services in their building. 

That arrangement lasted until 1956 when the pastor of the host church died and the efforts of the St. Cyril of Turau congregation to buy the orphaned building did not succeed. 

Following this setback the congregation was forced again to rent temporary quarters. 

It was also forced to intensify fund raising efforts and search for an affordable building. 

Finally in the middle of 1957 the present cathedral building was found and purchased. Its condition was deplorable and it needed many costly improvements just to make it suitable for use as a place of worship. 

A large part of those improvements was done voluntarily by the parishioners and the first Service was held on November 3, 1957. 

Since then the building of St. Cyril Cathedral served two generations of Belarusan immigrants as a place of worship and a civic center. 

With the natural departure of its founders and original members, the St. Cyril's of Turau Cathedral is now embracing a new generation of refugees from the renascent communist terror in Belarus and entrusting its future to their care.