16,951
edits
Changes
deleted duplication
:Metropolitan [[Gerasimos (Messara) of Beirut|Gerassimos (Messerah) of Beirut]] received a Western Rite movement in England before World War I, and Metropolitan [[Germanos (Shehadi) of Zahle|Germanos (Shehadi)]], while resident in the United States, engaged in negotiations to receive a [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] movement in Mexico in the 1920s. Neither of these projects resulted in a continuing community. They are noticed here to demonstrate that an Orthodox Western Rite is not a recent project.
:Our present Western Rite Vicariate began with the return of a few parishes of converts that had dropped out of our diocese in the difficult days after World War I. It was approved by the late Patriarch [[Alexander]] and was finally received in the early 1950s. There are presently some twenty centers. There are no invented services: the parishes use either the form approved for Overbeck or for Patriarch Tikhon, now a saint of the Church.[http://www.westernorthodox.com/twain]
Thus, in some sense, the Antiochian Archdiocese "inherited" the parishes which made up the Western Rite Vicariate.
