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On August 11, 2008 In letters to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and Archbishop Demetrios the United States Orthodox Churches under the Jerusalem Patriarchate rejected the Vicariate for Palestinian/Jordanian Communities that was forced on them. {{cite}}
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The '''Vicariate for Palestinian/Jordanian Communities in the USA''' is an administrative grouping formed in 2008 under the [[Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America]] (GOA). The Vicariate consists of parishes and monasteries formerly belonging to the [[Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem in North and South America]]. The Vicariate is directly under the [[omophorion]] of the GOA archbishop rather than the local [[metropolis]] in which the communities find themselves.
Tensions existed between this group of parishes and monasteries while it was under the Jerusalem Patriarchate and the [[Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America]], as the latter claims that Jerusalem worked to pull parishioners away from Antiochian (and [[Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America|Greek]]) parishes and into its own jurisdiction. The [[Ben Lomond crisis Crisis]] of 1998, in which an Antiochian parish in California split into two factions, one of which eventually made its way into the Jerusalem Patriarchate (including the re-[[ordination]] of some of the clergy), further exacerbated these tensions.
As a result, as of [[May 2]], 2003, American Antiochian [[clergy]] were forbidden by their [[primate]], Metr. [[Philip (Saliba) of New York]], from [[concelebration|concelebrating]] or communing with American Jerusalem clergy (though not with clergy of the Jerusalem Patriarchate assigned to parishes in the Middle East). With the creation of the Vicariate, Metr. Philip again reiterated his 2003 archpastoral directive on [[August 7]], 2008, lamenting the action of the Ecumenical Patriarchate taking in communities that had formed mainly by breaking from Antiochian parishes.
In addition, a number of priests of the Jerusalem Patriarchate refused to accept the decision creating a new vicariate, stating their preference to remain under Jerusalem ([http://www.orthodoxnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=USNews.one&content_id=17215&CFID=126821103&CFTOKEN=38555010 Kalmoukos, 2008]).
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