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Vicariate for Palestinian-Jordanian Communities in the USA

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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) parishes and into its own jurisdiction. The Ben Lomond 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 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 (Kalmoukos, 2008).

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