Society of Clerks Secular of St. Basil

The Society of Clerks Secular of St. Basil (SSB) was formed from the Western Rite mission in America when the American Orthodox Catholic Church was dissolved. When the SSB entered into the Syrian Antiochian Archdiocese of New York in 1961, it became the Western Rite Vicariate.

American Orthodox Catholic Church

This Society had its origin in the work of Bishop Aftimios (Ofiesh) in the 1930’s. In the words of Father Alexander Turner:

It was . . . during the tempestuous days following the Bolshevik Revolution that the Society had its inception as a missionary organ of the nascent federation of American Orthodox colonies under Russian suzerainty, though of local Syrian administration. With the collapse of that plan and the submission of the ethnic groups to the churches of their homelands, the Society was left in isolation.

Bishop Aftimios of the Syro-Arab mission in the Russian Archdiocese, in 1932, consecrated an Episcopalian priest, Ignatius (William Albert) Nichols, as his auxiliary “bishop of Washington