interwiki, renameuser, Administrators
13,552
edits
Changes
→Epilogue
Aftimios Ofiesh lived in relative obscurity with his wife Mariam Namey Ofiesh, fathering a son named Paul, who eventually became a Presbyterian elder in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania.[http://www2.epix.net/~pbychmt/elders.html] After living in Wilkes-Barre and New Castle, towns in eastern Pennsylvania, the Ofiesh family finally settled in Kingston (near Wilkes-Barre). In 1937 he was asked by parishioners in Allentown to return to active leadership in the Orthodox Church and made one unsuccessful effort in response. Members of his wife's family in Wilkes-Barre record that he continued to dress as a bishop and was called by some of them "Uncle [[Sayedna]]." He died in Kingston on [[July 24]], 1966, a few months before his 86th birthday, leaving instructions that he should be buried quietly without any clergy.
In 1995, a group claiming the corporate rights to the names "The Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church in North America" (THEOCACNA) and "American Orthodox Catholic Church" (AOCC), regarding the church itself as having been "held in Locum Tenens due to lack of clergy" from 1966 to 1995[http://www.geocities.com/theocacnainc/trace.htm], formed a new holy synod and included Mariam Namey Ofiesh among the members of its board of trustees. It has since declared itself successively a metropolitanate (1997) and then a patriarchate (2003). In 1999 it suffered a major internal schism when four of its bishops broke from it and claimed the name for themselves. In the same year, Mrs. Ofiesh retired from the board and has since departed this life. Much of the group's website is dedicated to claims of their legal and canonical authenticity and especially to their registration of various names and service marks.
==Sources==